Memorable Days

[Anti-Mild]

I don't know what made me think of this but the chart below is from my most memorable weather event. I remember it clearly because I was out in it!

Picture the scene, it is 22.15 on a Sunday and I am waiting outside the sports centre in Perth waiting to get picked up by my stepfather to go home and I am standing out in the wildest blizzard I have ever experienced. He was supposed to pick me up at 22.00 and I didn't get picked up until 22.30, by which time the predetermined pick up point is under a snowdrift of about 4 feet (I had retreated to a bus shelter). It then took us 90 minutes to drive the 8 miles to our house, which as luck would have it was way out in the boonies.

It snowed for another 36 hours or so and at the end of it we could open the back door and see nothing but a wall of white. We had an oil boiler, unfortunately the pipeline from the tank to the house froze. The high winds cut off our power. Our house clings to the side of a steep hill overlooking the A9 a few miles outside of Perth so there was no way we could go anywhere except on foot. That said, the nearest shop was 2 miles away. We were stranded with no electricity or heat.

I had a blast!!

I would be interested to know what other peoples most memorable events are.

Edited March 7, 2005 by Anti-Mild

[Shiny_Bottom_1]

Blimey AM.

That chart looks like the north pole literally moved south.

[Terminal Moraine]

Your account set me thinking Anti Mild. I suppose my most memorable snow events would be in Feb' 1956 and Feb' 1979.

I'll recount 1979 as I was alot older and can remember it more vividly.

I think ( without checking ) that it was the 15th, I got up for work at about 6.0 a.m, snow was falling heavily and a full blizzard was raging over high ground. I had to walk a couple of miles to the local town to get a lift to work, even down in the valley the roads had 10-15cm of lying snow and traffic was having serious difficulty. We set off for a 16 mile drive towards Derby, it was hair raising to say the least and we could barely manage 20 mph at any point. After 5 miles we came to a halt, even down in the river valley the drifting snow from adjacent fields was so severe that there were already drifts up to 1.5m deep halfway across the road. We decided that even if we made it to work we probably wouldn't get back so turned round and went home.

I trudged 2 miles back up the hill to home, the blizzard was impossible to face and I was glad it wasn't further.

It snowed all day and was still blowing a blizzard when I went to bed.

Next morning and I was up at 6.0 again to make an attempt to go to work. Things didn't look too promising when I got downstairs to the kitchen to find a drift of snow curling halfway across the floor from a gap in the ill fitting door, there was a constant fine aerosol of snow coming through the gap. After scooping 4 washing up bowls of snow into the sink I opened the back door to take a look outside. To my great surprise it was a wall of snow from top to bottom. I decided to try the front door, more luck this time; the wind had swept the front yard bare of snow for about 5 metres from the house, after that it was 2-4 feet of drifted snow. The main road through the village was completely blocked, nothing was moving and the blizzard raged unabated with visibility down to a few feet at times.

By the end of the day the wind had abated a little and the snow was lighter. Despite the fact the village lies on a B road it was 3 days before it was open, some isolated villages nearby were cut off for over a week. Many roads were blocked by drifts 5-8 feet deep and some had drifts 10-18 feet deep. A Hi-Mac excavator was sent to dig out one local village but became stuck when the digging arm couldn't reach the bottom of the snow to lift the machine from a drift.

Cuttings on the old High Peak Railway were filled with snow to a depth of over 20 feet and drift remnants lasted until May.

Fortunately we didn't lose power for more than a few hours but it was so cold that even with the fire blazing away there were icicles hanging from the key on the inside of the living room door.

I had 3 days off work; it would have been 5 but the blizzard began on a Wednesday and was at it's worst on the Thursday and Friday.

I live in hope that perhaps...one day.

T.M

[johnholmes]

hi

From another thread but it gives the picture regarding really svere winter weather

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/gesc_b/Pages/...ebruary1947.htm

how many can say, 'I was there'?,

well I can!, and 1963 was not far behind it where my parents lived. Even where I was working in Notttinghamshire it was pretty remarkable. I'll dig out my weather diary I kept for that winter one day.

Spells of wintry weather after that, oh I forgot some of the 50's winters were quite cold and snowy for longish spells,

so after 1963, 1979

December 1981, including Xmas, 1987, must be one or more in the 90's, just before Xmas 1990, most of the Peak District was cut off for 2-3 days. I think that is it.

cheers

John

cheers

John

[West is Best]

Great thread! That article from Birmingham really puts everything into perspective. Blimey!

I remember getting up one morning in the winter of 78/79. I thought it was February, but maybe it was the previous month. I was in Uppingham. Opened the door of the house and there was this extraordinary swirling drifting snow. I'd seen many a snowfall in the previous 15 years of my life but this was the first time I'd seen such dry snow and drifting. It was incredible. In places the ground just had an icing sugar effect, and then further away there would be 2 to 3 feet of snow. A few days later I met up with my father who'd been driving back from East Anglia in the blizzards. The snow had been 10 foot deep and more over the hedgerows and he'd been stuck. He had to walk the final miles to our home in Northamptonshire and at one point he lay down in the snow and started falling asleep. That was a remarkable winter.

If it's snow, not cold, then I guess that winter does stick out. But it was also so cold in 1984/5 and 1985/6 that those two winters really stick out for me too. There was snow from time to time, but it was the persistent hard frosts and sub-zero temps that was extraordinary. But the winter of 1981/2 also really sticks out for cold. There was 'that' morning. I got up at our house in Northamptonshire and looked at the thermometre. It read -25C. The date was 10th January 1982. And over in Shropshire they had recorded the lowest minimum English temp since records began -26.1C. That was cold, and that was real winter.

Edited March 7, 2005 by West is Best

[Anti-Mild]

I have to say that I would rather it was really cold than really snowy, I think that feels more like winter to me. Another memory I have regarding the cold is from either early 86 or 87, given the CET records I will assume it's Feb 86.

There wasn't much in the way of snow but it was very cold indeed. There was a stream down the hill from our house, not a wide one, only about 5 or 6 feet, but it had frozen. Now this was a fairly regular thing as I remember often skating on it. This time me and my friends took it upon ourselves to see if we could break the ice. It took a lot of time and effort but we finally managed it. When we did we saw that the ice was around 5cm thick. Now to a group of young boys this is fairly impressive but the best was yet to come. Having broken the ice we expected water to come up through the gap but none did. Upon closer inspection we realised that there was no water at all beneath the ice and we could see the bottom of the stream, about 2 feet below us. I assume that the source of the stream had frozen and the water below the ice had simply flowed away.

I also remember making my own skating track by throwing jugs of water onto the pavement outside my house. The water froze in less than a minute!

While I love snow, next winter I would prefer a really cold spell of a week or more where the temperature never gets above freezing and drops to about -20c. Brilliant!

Edited March 8, 2005 by Anti-Mild

[Nick H]

My most memorable weather event is 10 August 2003 in London.

2nd place: January 1987

3rd place: December 1981

Funny how everyone else seems to go for winter! Maybe it's because I live nr Redhill Aerodrome I'm used to winter cold...

[summer blizzard]

But the winter of 1981/2 also really sticks out for cold. There was 'that' morning. I got up at our house in Northamptonshire and looked at the thermometre. It read -25C. The date was 10th January 1982. And over in Shropshire they had recorded the lowest minimum English temp since records began -26.1C. That was cold, and that was real winter.

Here is the chart for that day, a large inversion was caused by high pressure directly over the British Isles.