December 1981-January 1982

[Don]

5 hours ago, A Face like Thunder said:

Friday 11th Dec was bad, bad, bad in Surrey, leading to the cancellation of a farewell party at work as staff made a quick getaway to try and get home before they were stranded by the snow. I managed it .... just. Sat 12th and Sun 13th were beautiful days, quite Alpine to view, but the nights were freezing, with the temperature on the Epsom Downs falling to 6F, -14.4C. 

I remember the 8th-13th December period surprisingly well in Surrey, considering I was just 5 years old!  Had a covering of snow on the morning of the 8th, followed by two days of dry weather, but Friday 11th was epic!  I remember Saturday being dry and sunny with deep snow cover and my excitement was re-ignited Sunday afternoon when the snow started up again.  However, this was to be very short lived, as come evening, it turned to rain with a thaw underway!  In the days running up to Christmas, many places had more significant snow, but my area largely missed out.  However, there was still a slight covering on the ground Christmas Day.

The best snowfall of winter 81/82 for me occurred after the first week of January, lasting more than a week, before milder weather arrived, effectively heralding the end of winter for significant cold weather.

[stewfox]

Remember it well. The bus skidding on the way to college on my mums birthday 

[cheeky_monkey]

1 hour ago, Summer8906 said:

Possible I guess that the heavy snow I remember was Fri 11th and not Tues 8th, just going off the old newspaper forecasts above.

Can't remember the day of week in all honesty, except it was a weekday.

I guess it's conceivable the Fri 11th event produced "wet snow" where I was a little further south and slightly thawed the first round on the 8th.

Looking at the newspaper reports again it looks like the south coast resorts did particularly badly this month for snow, just like they did in the (less severe) December 1995. Repeated partial incursions of milder air (which were then pushed back again) being to blame; looks like northern France would have had a very frustrating time in Dec 1981 often being in the mild air south of the frontal systems.

Would be very interested to hear any reports of the southwestern part of Surrey, northwestern part of Sussex or inland eastern Hampshire in particular.

it was defiently the 8th that the first snow set it..i too was at school ..the Friday was one of those forecast snow event that didnt happen in my area  but other parts of the south got a dumping..sunday i remember the snow started early morning and had blizzards well into the afternoon before it turned back to rain..think the cold returned from Tuesday so the mild spell was short lived.