Polar Bears in Doncaster

The tree colours don't seem to changing to brown/gold very quickly this autumn - everything still seems pretty green to me!

August 1975 and 1976 were very hot - the latter followed by a very wet September.

August 1990 was very hot. August 1984 was a good one too.

I have mused on a 16 year cycle of severe winter weather beginning in 1947. The next event was 1963 with 1979 after that. The theory falls apart at that point because the next event should have been 1995 and as far as I recall that was not a severe winter. Moving forward the next event in the cycle should have been 2011 - following December 2010 - but of course the severe weather tailed off before January began!

There seemed many parallels to me between December 1981 and December 2010 in terms of low temperatures and snow. 1978/79 was very severe - the greatest depth of snow I have seen occurred in February. I had just turned 2 in late December 1962 so the 1963 event was outside my recollection but there were other snowy winters in the 1960's. There were snowy spells in January 1987 and the early months of 1991. 1995/96 produced some decent snowfall. Mild winters seemed frequent in the mid 1970's and again during the last decade.

Yes hurricane Charley... ...our wedding day!!! Remember that one well

It literally was the last couple of days.

Very cold and very sunny late December 1979.

Overall 1976 produced a sunny hot summer but it finished dismally in September with a lot of rain. June was incredible for sunshine I recall and the drought that year resulted in the Ladybower reservoir level in the Peak District dropping to expose the old ruins of Derwent Hall and other stuff. For me 1975 produced a much better summer in terms of sunshine and warmth - although I think it snowed somewhere in the UK during June!

Forever Autumn sung by Justin Hayward from the war of the worlds album... ...memories from 1978.

More chaos to the science of weather forecasting!

Incredible weather yesterday (Friday) - the sudden heat spike and back down today. The jet stream must be compressing the extreme hot weather on the continent and every now and then it releases it on to the UK.