"Old-fashioned winters"

[Weather-history]

You often here the term "even larger teapot" to describe recent winters, well here's a report I have written late 1926 talking about whether cold snowy winters have become "old fashioned". There were one or two responses to this article by M.T.Spence.

[Guest Mike W]

Thansk for that, it's an interetsing article. The thing is though is that when we think of old fashioned winters , we think of at least a wekk of snowy weather affecting the UK at different dasy of 1 week at least, whereas back in 1926 when this article was done, they were thinking of the Little Ice Age winters with snowy/blizzards and ice floes weatrher lasting for weeks on end and possibly months, bascially the hoter the claimte hasd become,a s it is now, the less we ask for in terms of old fashioned winter, to most the witner of 1990/91 or 1995/96 would be considered today as the benchmark for an old fashioned winter going no higher than Jan 1987 to ask for whereas back in 1926, only a winter like 1895 or 1879 would be considered a return to old fashione dwinters. Basically things have changed, mild winters are milder and we have had more of them they did back then, and we are continuing to do so, by 1926 they even had a Novembers below 3 on the CET and they had the witner of 1916/17 which was the 3rd coldest of the 20th Century, we have had nothing like that.

[J10]

Does anyone still keep records on the number of skating days on Regent's Park.

[Summer of 95]

Fascinating article, especially notable for Mr Horner echoing so many of the points often made on here when comparing recent winters to those of the mid-90s and earlier (lack of ice days, cold snaps not as cold, the "flattening" of temperature extremes- even regarding the skates; every child it seemed had a toboggan 20 years ago but how many do now?)

Also noteworthy was that this article dates from the middle of the warm period of the early 20thC which was followed by 50 years of more frequent cold which continued in full until the late 80s with the odd vestige of it lasting until about 1997. From what I have read the winters of the early/mid 30s were as bad for cold/snow as any of the worst 90s/00s ones: I can remember reading in an old weather book that the easterly of December 1938 was the first time for several years that it snowed properly in London (just like Jan 2003)

[Weather-history]

I can remember reading in an old weather book that the easterly of December 1938 was the first time for several years that it snowed properly in London (just like Jan 2003)

Even during the winter of 1928-29, the snowfalls in London were unremarkable. There was 5 inches of snow on Hampstead Heath on the 17th of January 1936 and that was the greatest depth since the Christmas 1927 snow event.

[Weather-history]

Here is a report from September 1922 referring to the mild winters over Europe in recent years