Billy Hicks

2010’s famous winter is the easiest pick of the lot. 2011 I’ll go for the autumn as that late Sep/early Oct heatwave was very special and felt better than most of that summer. 2012 I want to say the Spring for being bookended with that incredible end of March and nice spell in May, shame April was horrific in the middle though. 2013 easily the summer, finally rescuing us from the never ending cold run and the first summer that really felt like a success since 2006, even if it didn’t completely last until the end of August. 2014 had an underrated and lovely autumn, very sunny with the warmest ever Halloween. 2015 I temporarily moved to Australia in the autumn/their spring, so I’ll go for their southern hemisphere summer as it’s the only one I’ve spent Christmas on a beach in 33 degrees. 2016 I was still in Australia so it’s their autumn (March to May), which saw me start in tropical Cairns and eventually much lower down in Hobart, seeing my first snow in May. 2017 I moved back to the UK in time to see snow in this country again for the first time since 2013, so I’ll go for the winter. 2018 an easy one for that unforgettable summer. And 2019 probably the hardest one of the lot as I could go for the late winter (February heatwave) or spring (a nice Easter) but instead I’ll go for the summer too, for that brief record breaker July day (until 2022 deservedly smashed it) and another nice run of sun in late August!

I got married yesterday and still can’t believe my luck. Not just because I’m wed to the woman of my dreams, but that despite picking this day way back in 2022, we somehow got very lucky and picked one of the only completely dry days for some time. Yes it was chilly outside but in the few moments the cloud cleared and the sun popped its head out, our photographer seized the chance and snapped away, so it’s going to look a lot warmer in the photos! All this spring I’ve trudged to and from work in the grey skies and rain and hoped for so long there’d be an exception on the 20th April, secretly hoping for a 2011 or 2020 run of sunshine but I’m still very happy with what I got, especially noticing the rain comes back in force next week. Now to hope it gets better for our north England minimoon in May!

1997 stands out a lot for me due to the clear dark skies on holiday in Hereford and the incredible view of Hale-Bopp in the evening, a big memory even though I was quite young at the time. I wrote about 2008 in my diary at the time and how magical the falling snow looked on Easter Sunday, even if it was gone quite quickly. That was also the earliest Easter we’ll experience in our lifetimes, and 2011 a few years later is one of the latest - what a difference! Incredible summer-like weather and the culmination of an underrated month in a topsy-turvy year, where the months either side of summer felt warmer than the season itself. More recently 2019 stood out as also being very pleasant (another late one) as did 2020, even in the latter’s case when the world itself wasn’t.

After the horror shows of 2007 and 8 this one started really well and there did seem to be a brief feeling in late June that we were finally going to get another scorcher, that weather at the end of the month was fantastic in London. Unfortunately that mostly was as good as it got as much of July was wet as already stated, and my early August photos mostly show grey cloud before brightening up at the very end of the month in time for the Notting Hill Carnival. Luckily we had a really nice September which arrived just in time for me to turn 21, starting back at uni that month on the right track! Not the long hot summer it could have been, but it’s a beautiful blur of youthful house parties, nights out and ‘I Gotta Feeling’ by the Black Eyed Peas playing at every opportunity, so I’ll always be fond of this one.

I was in a lucky situation during this time where most of my friends and family remained very sociable, so I spent much of this time travelling on mostly empty tube trains to visit people and having long walks with pals across quiet parts of central London, chuckling at how bizarre everything had got. There was a park near my flat at the time I spent sunbathing in that incredible weather, and a local Tesco which had many of its products on heavy discount as no one other than me was buying them, so I was regularly paying for food and drink approximately what they would have cost in the 1980s! With an huge amount of hindsight it was a good Spring, but of course at the time I was regularly worried my furlough would come to an end and I’d lose my job (which luckily I never did), anyone I knew was suddenly going to become unwell and/or die (they didn’t) or just lockdowns now being life forever and nothing was ever going to reopen again. I am really glad the season was as sunny as it was as it would have all been too immensely depressing otherwise, and my personal least favourite week of that era was in February 2021, when temperatures were below freezing for a few days so we couldn’t even leave home if we wanted to, and there seemed to be absolutely no end in sight at the time. April 2021 being a cold one was also rather annoying as for a month during that time we could only eat or drink outdoors!

Yep, I count 2012 in the underrated club as well. Lots of warm days in that second half in London and the South East but many had given up on it after that terrible June, it was the summer I graduated and it was nice that the hot weather arrived just in time for me to enjoy it. I’d add 2010 as a reverse of this in that the first half of it was really quite nice, though admittedly it did fall apart a bit by August. Probably my favourite of the 2007-11 run.

I worked as a steward at the Royal Albert Hall at the time and we'd just started the BBC Proms season. The previous year while the building was closed we'd completely upgraded the air cooling of the building (after summer 2018 and July 2019 had been quite uncomfortable for some customers) and to everyone's huge relief it worked perfectly on this day, lots of happy customers thanking us for what could have been a difficult evening otherwise. 2022 is one of those wonderful years where I remember both a hot summer and a heavy snowfall in the winter, along with 1995, 2003, 2013 and 2018. Pity the summers of 2009 and 10 weren't better!

This was a really big one in the South East and does seem a bit forgotten now, it came after a completely snowless 2011 here (although that wasn't seen as too much of a problem given how unforgettable 2010 was!) and crucially fell on a Saturday night, causing some very long delays home as trains and buses came to a standstill. I was stuck in central London for hours waiting for buses and my dad was equally stuck on the motorway between Birmingham and London, we both ended up getting home about 5-6am Sunday morning. Along with January 2013 and those big years of 2009-10 it did start to feel like snow was going to be back every year again, until the wet winter of 2013-14 heralded a change in winters to mostly snowless ones again until later in the decade.

Yeah I really think 2012 gets far too poor a reputation, and it's mostly based on that infamous Jubilee weekend along with April and the rest of June. I look at photographs from that era and there's a lot of me and friends in hot sunny weather, mostly from late May around the time of the Eurovision Song Contest (Loreen's 'Euphoria' reminding me of a heatwave as I travelled to and from uni for my final year exams!) and the opening weekend of the Olympics, along with some festivals in the August having some nice blue skies too. And earlier on in that year we'd had that almost record-breaking sunny end of March so it really wasn't the disastrous year in London at least that it seems to have become known for, I'd even call it an underrated summer. 2007 though? Every photo I have is dark, grey, miserable skies and from memory that utterly deserves its miserable reputation. As does 2008 which gets a bit forgotten for a horrible August, and some brief but not particularly long lasting sunnier spells earlier in the season.

I've started this from 2002/03 as I don't remember much about previous years, with the exception of 1995-6 in my childhood and very hazy memories of February 1991. I have a photo from December 2000 of a very snowy view from out my window so that must have been a big one here too. 1. 2009/10 as many have said already. Huge snowfalls in December and January and being in my second year of uni reminds me of many cold but ultimately nostalgic nights out. Highlight was seeing the Pet Shop Boys live at the O2 that December, them introducing their new song called 'It Doesn't Often Snow at Christmas' and everyone bursting into laughter. 2. 2010/11 for that unforgettable white Christmas, even in the south west of England with snowmen on the beach. Nothing much outside of that month but December was so memorable it deserves a high place. 3. 2017/18 for a noticeable December flurry and of course the Beast from the East being the first significant snow London had seen since early 2013, which even then felt like a lifetime ago and a relief after a run of horrible wet and stormy winters. 4. 2008/9 entirely for that very famous 2nd February, the biggest snow London had seen since 1991 and heavily reported on at the time. I went around Wembley with my then new digital camera and the photos still look astonishing today, especially the one with a petrol sign showing just over 80p a litre! 5. 2022/23 for that big snowfall in December which almost got as far as Christmas but didn't quite match 2010, and more early in the new year making it one of the most spectacular of recent years. 6. 2012/13, a major snow event in January which heralded the start of the Never Ending Winter that year to the point where listening to Now That's What I Call Music 84 (released Spring that year) reminds me heavily of shivering across London on Overground trains. 7. 2020/21 for the two snowfalls in January and February which were a rather wonderful distraction from all the lockdowns going on at the time, I lived in the centre of London then and walking around it in that weather - with very few crowds - is an incredibly powerful memory. 8. 2002/3 as captured at the time on the first digital camera we ever owned, the end of January was a major surprise with the snow lasting for a few days afterwards. 9. 2011/12 solely for the one big snow event that year in early February, which turned what should have been a quick journey home into one lasting all night, no night tube then and buses and taxis (crammed full of Saturday night crowds) blocked from making their journeys. 10. 2018/19 for a small snow event at the start of February and that incredible heatwave at the end of it, one of the biggest weather shifts in one month I can remember! 11. 2013/14 which for once was completely snowless here but definitely memorable, huge winds meaning walking to and from work became a challenge and a very difficult journey to Devon on Christmas Eve, taking many hours longer than usual due to almost the entire train network shutting down. 12. 2006/7 for one of the biggest snow events of that decade so far in February (until 2009 completely obliterated it) and otherwise a nicely frosty winter. 13. 2003/4 which I don't remember too much of but there were some snowfalls in January here according to an old diary of mine. And I really can't remember much about any of the others, the rest of the 2000s were just the occasional small snow or sleety day with not much else, and the other 2010s winters were more stormy then snowy, none on the scale of 2013-14 which was at least memorably so. 2015/16 I spent completely out of the country so missed that one (although from posts above it looks like that was a very good thing) and the winter just gone I mostly just got rained on with no obvious hot or cold extremes!

How funny, September 24th is my birthday too! I remember 2021’s being incredible in London - felt like a peak summer day with bright sunshine throughout, whereas in contrast in 2010 it was very unseasonably cold and a preview of what that winter would bring. Hope this one is good as it’s nice to have it on a weekend.

These are two of my photos from Wembley, NW London on that very notable 06/04/2008, the new stadium only a year old at the time. April 2013 and 2021 also brought snow showers here but I don’t think they settled like this one.

For cold/snow (all in NW London unless stated otherwise): Late Nov to Christmas 2010 Last few days of 1995 (in Aberdeen!) Early to Mid January 2010 Late January 2003 Early February 2009 Mid Feb 2021 Late Feb/Early March 2018 March 2013 Early April 2008 (and then a sudden switch to a lovely 2011/2018 style April please!)

This heavily stands out in NW London as one of the few major snow events across that entire decade, and seems either forgotten now or completely eclipsed in memory by the colossal amount we had in February 2009. Certainly was the biggest here for some time, here’s a photo I took from that day (aged 18) just off Neasden Lane.

An absolutely unforgettable year, probably the best in terms of variety of that whole decade - almost every possible extreme was seen in my NW London home at the time, from intense cold to scorching heat to mega wind and rainfalls. The first half of the year was horrendously cold as mentioned and it felt like the winter that wouldn’t end, a big snowfall in January that wouldn’t be seen again for about five years and that infamously cold March with snow seen well into April. I was 24 at the time having recently graduated from uni, and so many songs from around this time remind me of the cold weather - Pink’s Just Give Me A Reason, Disclosure’s White Noise and most other tracks on Now That’s What I Call Music 84. As late as June I remember people joking about what they’re doing for Christmas as the cold spell dragged on that long… …and then came that astonishing July and early August. First genuinely strong summer spell since 2006 which felt like a lifetime ago by then. So many days of sitting in the park with an iPod Nano, the summer of Get Lucky, Blurred Lines, Wake Me Up etc. Shame it didn’t last through August but it stands out so much in a long run of average to poor summers and wouldn’t be seen again until 2018. I’m surprised people have commented the second half wasn’t as memorable because the St Jude storm in October was very heavily reported at the time to the point where it was hailed as a “new 1987”, but it didn’t cause as much damage compared to then and isn’t remembered much at all now. I do have plenty of photos from the following morning of fallen trees around my neighbourhood so it did have a visual aftermath. While no snow to end the year it still brought a significant amount of wind and rain and just before Christmas I remember barely being able to walk home from the windstorm taking place. Christmas Eve was complete chaos with tons of cancelled and delayed trains and my journey from London to Devon took most of the day, eventually finally getting an Exeter train from Reading in one of the most uncomfortable and squashed environments I’ve ever been in. To end the year was a very wet New Years Eve, the BBC broadcast of the fireworks surreally being the highest rated programme of the whole year as so few went out that night! Fantastic year with lots to recall.