Not rose tinted but bring back the falls of 1962/63....

 

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Not rose tinted but bring back the falls of 1962/63....

 

 

For the majority of the UK, they weren't that great. There's other years with better & more widespread snowfalls.

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A 1962/1963 winter would be great to experience - even if the snow depths were unremarkable, it would be amazing to have more than 2 months of continuous snow cover, with average monthly max temps below freezing.

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A 1962/1963 winter would be great to experience - even if the snow depths were unremarkable, it would be amazing to have more than 2 months of continuous snow cover, with average monthly max temps below freezing.

We had that from 27th November 2010, through Christmas and well into the new year and as much as I love snow, I actually got fed up with it!  When you can’t go about your normal life, driving anywhere is so difficult that you restrict it to essential journeys only and walking on uneven frozen snow is dangerous, it does become a nuisance!  We had mounds of grey icy snow in car parks slowly melting into Spring. 

I’d be happy with the odd days of snow that are useful for sledging and building snowmen!  When it hangs around and freezes, it’s good for nothing and it even looks messy when paths have been cleared and it’s been piled up and gone grey!  I think some parts of the UK have done really well this year to have had more than one relatively short lived snow event!  I’m not convinced we won’t get more either!  This winter feels different to the last few. 

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I experienced that in Canada and loved every minute of it - but experiencing it at home would be a dream come true. Though Canada is, of course, much better prepared for snow than the UK (which is seemingly pretty bad at dealing with any kind of adverse weather).

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In the 40s and 50s with no central heating it was, if my memory serves, commonplace to have ice on the inside of my bedroom window in the morning - a very pale shade of rose-tinting? but at least ponds in SE London/NW Kent froze over most years with the ice strong enough to walk on. 

1940 -1960; 7 winters with 'little' snow

1996 - 2016; 14 winters with 'little'snow

according to http://www.neforum2.co.uk/ferryhillweather/bonacina.html 

though since 'little' snow winters tend to cluster, a slight change in the period selected can make a sharp difference.

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Interesting thread, and one I had thought about bringing up if I'd found the time. I think the older you get, the harder it is to remember clearly what actually happened. Unless you were a bigger nut than me and wrote it all down. Growing up in the 80s I had the same feeling as Phil about snow being a given year in year out. Always had a mild wet Dec (except 81) never a chance of a white Christmas. I was living in West London at the time and thought it was normal to get winters like 87 etc all the time. Fog was also common and summers crap. I don't have memories of any decent hot weather during the summers unlike my recollection of what happened in winter. Some memories of thunderstorms at night and torrential downpours during summer. Until the storm in Oct 87 I didn't' have a memory for wind events. Did the wind then shift the fog? After 87 I have plenty of wind memories going into the 90s. I was shocked when the apparent switch flicked after the 86/87 winter and we had snowless winters until 91 (may have been snow in spring during that time which felt odd). 91 itself seemed to be following on from the previous few winters until I saw the farming weather forecast on the Sunday before. Went from mild 10,11,12C to around 30cms of snow. This for me being the last decent fall of snow I've experienced. I thought the switch had been flipped again at that point. Then boredom set in. 95 cold but snowless. 97 pants in west London. 2003 saw a couple of decent falls that lasted a day. 2005 again crap. The one thing I enjoyed during the 90s etc were the summers. My god they were good. That was the flip side of the apparent flipped switch.

 

In 2006 I moved to East Anglia. I missed the decent snow during the new 80s period of 08/09 - 12/13 back in London. 2010 was ok here but not much snow. Last decent fall of snow was Feb 2012 I think. Around 20cms but it never got topped up like back in the day and was lacking something. The current period feels like it did at the end of the 86/87 winter.

 

Getting jealous and p'eed off when everywhere else gets snow and you don't isn' good for your health😳

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In the 40s and 50s with no central heating it was, if my memory serves, commonplace to have ice on the inside of my bedroom window in the morning - a very pale shade of rose-tinting?

It'd still happen in my house, given the right conditions: the kitchen has no heating and has single-glazed windows facing north and east. If (and it's a big if) there's a NE'ly blowing and it's below freezing for several hours, condensation will form and freeze on the windowpane.

It's rare to see it, though, as heat generally leaks into the kitchen from the rest of the house... and it's extra-rare to get subzero temperatures with a NE'ly these days!

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When reading through the various threads recently there is a lot of talk about winters not being what they used to be etc.

No doubt some of the weather in the past was certainly better from a wintery perspective than it has been over the past 20 years or so on the whole,, but do we look back on those days 30/40/50 years ago and in our heads see something that is different to the reality at the time, especially the length of the cold spells with the exeption of obvious extere winters.

The question is purely from a actual weather on the ground perspective rather than synoptically.

You be amazed when you read articles of decades ago talking about how the weather has changed and it wasn't as good as it used to be. Even in the Victorian era, a cold snowy winter was referred to as an old-fashioned winter.

Today, we look at the Victorian era through Dickens's eye of White Christmases galore etc but that wasn't the norm. For instance, Dickens in his youth from 11 to 17 would have experienced 6 consecutive Christmas Days that were average to very mild temperature wise. 

A Times editorial from January 1937 says the south is not the best place to learn the beauty of snow.

Boxing Day 1891 Times editorial talks about the old fashioned winter as the exception 

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You be amazed when you read articles of decades ago talking about how the weather has changed and it wasn't as good as it used to be. Even in the Victorian era, a cold snowy winter was referred to as an old-fashioned winter.

Today, we look at the Victorian era through Dickens's eye of White Christmases galore etc but that wasn't the norm. For instance, Dickens in his youth from 11 to 17 would have experienced 6 consecutive Christmas Days that were average to very mild temperature wise. 

A Times editorial from January 1937 says the south is not the best place to learn the beauty of snow.

Boxing Day 1891 Times editorial talks about the old fashioned winter as the exception 

Don't dispute that has been said, but...

If we look at the winter CET something clear HAS changed. Without mentioning 'YKW' I think we can see that while the warmest winters over recent decades aren't much warmer, the coldest seem to be more noticeably absent.

I could speculate that the seas haven't warmed much (so Atlantic air masses haven't much either), but that cold winter air masses (coming off land or less sea ice), have.

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I was born in 84 and my first winter memories are really the early 90''s. Can't say I have a rose tinted view of the past. Each year apart from 13/14 there has been some significant snow to enjoy as well as short lived dustings. But winters are mostly mild,wet and windy.

Best memories are Feb 91, Jan 95, 95/96, 00/01, 08/09, 09/10, 10/11 , 12/13 so mostly in adult life and around the turn of this decade being the pinicle.

Considering I was at school from 89 to 02, only can remember missing school in Jan 95 and few times in 00/01. Not sure about Feb 91 but there was nearly two feet of snow.

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 You be amazed when you read articles of decades ago talking about how the weather has changed and it wasn't as good as it used to be. Even in the Victorian era, a cold snowy winter was referred to as an old-fashioned winter.

Today, we look at the Victorian era through Dickens's eye of White Christmases galore etc but that wasn't the norm. For instance, Dickens in his youth from 11 to 17 would have experienced 6 consecutive Christmas Days that were average to very mild temperature wise. 

A Times editorial from January 1937 says the south is not the best place to learn the beauty of snow.

Boxing Day 1891 Times editorial talks about the old fashioned winter as the exception 

I think from a very early age we’re taught what seasons are perceived to be as typical. I remember the walls in my primary school with pictures of flowers in Spring, melting ice creams in Summer, the windswept girl with the inside out brolly and swirling leaves in Autumn and always snow in winter. Calendars depict the same with idealistic images of the weather and Christmas cards always have snow covered cottages and Robins in snow but they wouldn’t look quite as romantic in rain.  Christmas songs invariably have snowy lyrics!  So there’s little wonder we expect the weather to be snowy in winter etc.  

Dickens obviously saw through rose tints as well if he didn’t actually have many snowy winters in his lifetime. But he wrote about them and his words painted a cold and snowy scene to tug on the romantic strings for added effect because all good writers of fiction use their imagination.  So when we talk about Dickensian winters, we mean the ones Dickens wrote about rather than the ones he experienced. 

My mum always talked about the snowy winters she had as a child and how she’d walk to school across the snowy field. She was a snow lover and often said winters are not like they used to be.  Yet her birthday was the day before mine (yesterday) and she also said, like me, that she hadn’t had many snowy birthdays.  I think it’s a case of memories of rare events that become better with age! 

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In the 40s and 50s with no central heating it was, if my memory serves, commonplace to have ice on the inside of my bedroom window in the morning - a very pale shade of rose-tinting? but at least ponds in SE London/NW Kent froze over most years with the ice strong enough to walk on. 

1940 -1960; 7 winters with 'little' snow

1996 - 2016; 14 winters with 'little'snow

according to http://www.neforum2.co.uk/ferryhillweather/bonacina.html 

though since 'little' snow winters tend to cluster, a slight change in the period selected can make a sharp difference.

The tendency of cold winters - or at least with notable cold spells - and mild ones to occur in clusters is something that I've also noticed during the period of getting on for sixty years when I've had an interest in the weather. Even putting 1962-3 aside, there were quite a few cold winters in the 1960s. Then - at least in SE England where I live - there was a run of mild winters from 1971 to 1977 pretty much lacking in decent snow. But then 1978 had notable blizzards in Scotland and SW England, 1978-9 was severe, and 1981-82, 1985, 1986 and 1987 all had severe cold spells. After that notable cold tended to become much scarcer (Feb 91, 1995-6, Dec 96), but we had another cluster recently with Feb 2009, the winter of 2009-10, December 2010 and Jan-Mar 2013. December 2010 was only seven years ago, so I think shows us that exceptional cold is still possible, though we can expect it to occur less frequently than in the past.

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The tendency of cold winters - or at least with notable cold spells - and mild ones to occur in clusters is something that I've also noticed during the period of getting on for sixty years when I've had an interest in the weather. Even putting 1962-3 aside, there were quite a few cold winters in the 1960s. Then - at least in SE England where I live - there was a run of mild winters from 1971 to 1977 pretty much lacking in decent snow. But then 1978 had notable blizzards in Scotland and SW England, 1978-9 was severe, and 1981-82, 1985, 1986 and 1987 all had severe cold spells. After that notable cold tended to become much scarcer (Feb 91, 1995-6, Dec 96), but we had another cluster recently with Feb 2009, the winter of 2009-10, December 2010 and Jan-Mar 2013. December 2010 was only seven years ago, so I think shows us that exceptional cold is still possible, though we can expect it to occur less frequently than in the past.

Bold 1: lowest CET outside of the famed year was 3.2°C in 1969- certainly not notable, although on the nippy side. There were several below 4°C.

Bold 2/3: You quote up to Dec 96; if that had been 7 years ago (as was in 2003) would that mean we could expect it less frequently? In fact, it was another 6 years past that before the noughties/tens run. I personally think this shows the continued uncertainty, and no evidence at all in even the decadanal time-frame that there won't be runs of snowy or cold winters. The big snow events here were Feb 09, Jan 10, Dec 10 and Jan 13. There was no 4-year run in the 80s like this. I know that a warming world suggests reduced probabilities of snow events in our region, but the mathematical sense that underpins the concept of probability itself denies certainty over such timescales.

 

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Something very definatly has changed with the british winter. In short mild dominates and cold spells are very short lived these days barring the odd noteable exeptions Dec 2010,March 2013 etc.

I remember the winters of the late 60`s and almost every winter came a time walking to school in the snow,snowball fights and skating in the playground,these were the days when schools did not close as soon as snow was mentioned and teachers were not snowflakes. I remember the epic winters of the mid 80`s brutally cold with classic easterlies the sort we have rarely seen since.

Something flipped in the late 80`s and it hasn`t flipped back. Even weather forecasters say it will be bitterly cold and proceed to slap 5c on the chart.

This winter much of the uk has seen snow, imby not a single flake has fallen and almost everyday has reached 5c even in a direct northerly!!  In recent years winter is effectivly over by mid February and looking at the temperature profile of the northern hemisphere there is no deep cold to tap into to produce proper cold and spring could well arrive on a few weeks here in the deep south.

Im no great fan of snow but would love to see a repeat of February 1986 still the coldest month since 1963.

Something very definatly has changed with the british winter. In short mild dominates and cold spells are very short lived these days barring the odd noteable exeptions Dec 2010,March 2013 etc.

I remember the winters of the late 60`s and almost every winter came a time walking to school in the snow,snowball fights and skating in the playground,these were the days when schools did not close as soon as snow was mentioned and teachers were not snowflakes. I remember the epic winters of the mid 80`s brutally cold with classic easterlies the sort we have rarely seen since.

Something flipped in the late 80`s and it hasn`t flipped back. Even weather forecasters say it will be bitterly cold and proceed to slap 5c on the chart.

This winter much of the uk has seen snow, imby not a single flake has fallen and almost everyday has reached 5c even in a direct northerly!!  In recent years winter is effectivly over by mid February and looking at the temperature profile of the northern hemisphere there is no deep cold to tap into to produce proper cold and spring could well arrive on a few weeks here in the deep south.

Im no great fan of snow but would love to see a repeat of February 1986 still the coldest month since 1963.

 

In contrast, as a fan of snow I'd much sooner see a repeat of December 2010 than of February 1986. Though it was marginally less cold, here in Surrey we had a lot more snow than in Feb 1986, which was a notably dry month here. 

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Something very definatly has changed with the british winter. In short mild dominates and cold spells are very short lived these days barring the odd noteable exeptions Dec 2010,March 2013 etc.

I remember the winters of the late 60`s and almost every winter came a time walking to school in the snow,snowball fights and skating in the playground,these were the days when schools did not close as soon as snow was mentioned and teachers were not snowflakes. I remember the epic winters of the mid 80`s brutally cold with classic easterlies the sort we have rarely seen since.

Something flipped in the late 80`s and it hasn`t flipped back. Even weather forecasters say it will be bitterly cold and proceed to slap 5c on the chart.

This winter much of the uk has seen snow, imby not a single flake has fallen and almost everyday has reached 5c even in a direct northerly!!  In recent years winter is effectivly over by mid February and looking at the temperature profile of the northern hemisphere there is no deep cold to tap into to produce proper cold and spring could well arrive on a few weeks here in the deep south.

Im no great fan of snow but would love to see a repeat of February 1986 still the coldest month since 1963.

Ahh but the question is, is it your rose tints that make you see it that way?  Do you remember walking to school in the rain?   Which I’m sure you will have done much more often than walking in the snow but it was more common so less memorable and of course, less enjoyable!

If you look at the records and compare them over the past six decades, I don’t think the British weather has really changed that much, other than periods of notable differences dotted about throughout that period.  

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It definitely depends on how far back in time you look.

I've kept snowfall records here since the early 1980's, and applying a "10-year moving average" to the figures, the 10-year period from 2004 to 2013 is actually snowier than any other since the 10 year period between 1982 and 1991.  Even in 2017,  the 10-year moving average was higher than at any point between 1992 and 2012.  So what that shows is that we've only relatively recently come out of a particularly snowy era which beats anything since the 1980's.  

The 10 year period between 1998 and 2007 remains the least snowiest decade in my records.  

I do accept that the frequency and duration of severe cold spells does seem to be gradually reducing over time, but as others have pointed out, let's not forget about November and December 2010.  It does show that a very severe cold/wintry spell still remains a possibility in this country.

 

 

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IMBYism, innt?

2010 was okay, but it was sopping wet snow rather than powder. No icicles. Ice days, yes, barely, but not coinciding with snowfall hence no powder. Feb 2005 saw much more snow, for far longer - it was the last time we had a textbook easterly setup, just a shame it was so late in the winter.

Jan 1997 was much better. Powder, icicles, daytime highs of -2 or -3 (and a string of ice days), sublimating snow (another thing not seen since then) and a proper deep cold easterly rather than recirculated northerlies.

Jan 96 was also better, as was Feb 91, Jan 87, Feb 86... the list goes on.

I can't believe that some people on here simply don't appreciate that 2010 was relatively pants in the far SE.

I did anticipate your response!

I do understand why a few people on this forum, owing to their particularly unfortunate location, won't be convinced that that they lived through one of the ultimate winter events that this country can deliver. 

But in a way that just emphasizes the extraordinary nature of the cold some of the rest of us experienced in Dec. 2010. If there were places such as yours, where it was all a bit forgettable, just think how unprecedentedly cold that month must have been in other places for the month as a whole to be more than a whole degree celsius colder than any other nationwide December since Met Office records began. 

Leaving the Leysdown let-down aside, why do so many other people in this country still ignore the fact that they experienced prolonged and record-breaking cold so recently, and at a time of year when it had previously only existed in a novelist's imagination?

I can only think that too many people's daily life that month consisted of walking from a stifling, centrally heated house to a car in a garage, then turning on the heater and driving through an urban heat island to a stifling, centrally heated office. Then immediately going online and gloomily noting the breakdown on day 10 of the model output.

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Today, we look at the Victorian era through Dickens's eye of White Christmases galore etc but that wasn't the norm. For instance, Dickens in his youth from 11 to 17 would have experienced 6 consecutive Christmas Days that were average to very mild temperature wise. 

 

But his childhood prior to that was characterised by 8 consecutive white Christmases.

 

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