IIRC we had a spell of such weather before both the mid-Dec '09 to mid-Jan '10 and late November/December 2010 severe spells.
It isn't normally the case, in my experience anyway, for us to go straight from an unsettled westerly period to a majoe cold outbreak without a HP-dominated spell in between them. We also had a spell like this before the February 1991 freeze too as far as I recall.
Originally Posted by: David M Porter