Parliament Orders A Fast Day...

[Weather-history]

Believe it or not it happened....

From Pepys diary of 25th January 1662 (old style)

"A fast day ordered by the Parliament to pray for more seasonable weather it having hitherto been summer weather, that is both as to warmth and every other things just as it were the middle of May or June...."

From John Evelyn's diary

"Great rain had fallen without any frost or seasonable cold, not only in England, but in Sweden and the most northern parts, being here near as warm as at Midsummer in some years..."

Ripley's Believe it or Not!

[Terminal Moraine]

This period seems to have been characterised by quite violent fluctuations in temperature from one year to the next or over a period of two or three years.

Contrast the above with the following winter in which Jan' and Feb' both had a CET of just 1.0c or the Jan' of 1660 which had a mean of 0.0c.

A little later on and the Jan' of 1682 had a CET of 6.0c, followed 2 years later by the coldest January in the entire CET series, apart from 1795.

Anyone then observing the weather must have had an interesting time

[Roger J Smith]

Well it worked a treat, they got the Maunder min and the Little Ice Age.

Not bad for missing one meal that was probably mostly oats and porridge anyway.