My weather records and memory go back to before 1947 (and I mean personally, not just looking things up). Some posters seem to regard the 1980's as the beginning of creation! Compared with previous cold winters, the current one never seems to been properly established, just hanging on by the skin of its teeth for most of the time, unlike the 'severe' winters of the past 60 years when no end seemed to be in sight unlike the present one which appears to be fading away with a whimper, and not a snowy bang! I remember the end of the 1947 winter on March 15/16th when a big snow 'event' seemed likely before the thaw, but here in Lancs, there was a few hours of light snow, before temps rose on the evening of the 15th and that was the end of it, apart from Scotland, where it took another week or so before the cold air was shifted. My earliest snowy memories were for late January 1940 when this area had a tremendous snowfall, at the same time as parts of the south and west were having freezing rain. There were no forecasts of course in wartime, but I wonder what the Met.Office would have made of it!