December 1938 Easterly

[Weather-history]

The old links seem to have been lost so I have updated this thread.

Christmas Day 1938 was a white Christmas across many parts of the UK, indeed apart from Christmas Day 1981, it was the deepest and most widespread Christmas snow of the 20th Century. The day itself was largely dry with just the odd snow flurry as most of the UK was under the influence of a ridge from Scandinavia, the run up to Christmas was cold and snowy especially in the south with an easterly to northeasterly wind bringing frequent snow showers especially to the east. Depths of snow was widely between 15 to 30cm and this drifted in the wind.

18th-25th December: -1.1

Reports from Europe

Mean pressure at Moscow for Dec '38 was 1036mb (+18mb above mean)

Northern Sweden: 1026mb (+16mb)

Oslo: 1021mb (+11mb)

Icelandic low: 994mb (-4mb below mean)

Siberia recorded temperatures of around -50C during the second week of December.

Lyons: -25C on the 22nd December

Milan: -10.6C on the 25th

Rivers, lakes, canals etc froze across most parts of Europe. Road, rail and air traffic were severely disrupted.

From the 20th December 1938 edition of the Times

21st December 1938 edition of the Times

[Fozfoster]

Very intresting, like the pictures to.

[John Cox]

Thanks Mr Data,

Brings me back to Jan 1982 here in Dublin.

[Thundery wintry showers]

Interesting that the coastal strip around Tynemouth was one of the few areas above 0C (32F) at 0700 on 20 December 1938. It's a stark illustration of the fact that easterlies associated with cold upper air have a habit of being marginal near the Tyne & Wear coast (though when they get cold side of marginal they can dump massive amounts of snow there, and even thundersnow events).

Since the easterly flow got a bit less cold in the few days before Christmas, I imagine that some coastal areas of eastern Scotland and north-eastern England might have missed out on a white Christmas that year, as the warming effects of the North Sea at the coast coupled with a less cold airmass may have raised temperatures a few degrees above freezing and seen the easterly winds fire in a wintry mix of hail, sleet and graupel. This can turn a snow cover into a slushy mess very quickly. Conversely, at Kew, where temperatures merely rose from below freezing to near freezing, the snow cover should have stuck around to give a white Christmas, and the same is probably true of most other regions.

Edit: I notice the completely different style of tabloid reporting of weather events back in the 1930s. There is much more emphasis on raw facts and data, much less sensationalism, and the advantages and disadvantages of snow are both given a fair account in most of these ancient articles- in huge contrast to today's articles which usually focus only on the disadvantages. The same prevalence of objectivity over subjectivity exists in ancient records like Symons's British Rainfall. One possible criticism is that the style of the old articles could be seen as a bit "dry", but today's articles have clearly gone too far the other way (IMHO).

Edited December 7, 2009 by Thundery wintry showers

[charlton north-downs]

Good one Mr Data. Nice to see a photo of where I live -Good old Biggin Hill -The Bus 410 was going to Bromley North Station but not for some time by the looks of it. All of that area is over 600ft high and if the winds are strong Easterly with snow then the Main Road gets blocked. There many old photos of The Biggin Hills main road blocked but alas the last time was Jan 1987 when the airport road was blocked with 20 foot drifts and buried a bus, a snow plough and many cars. Trouble is I have never seen a photo of it and would love to do so

My old met-office book described December 1938 like this

This was the best example in the 20th century of a traditional White Christmas. Snow commenced to fall on 18th December and continued practically every day up to and including 26th December , being particularly heavy on the 20th and 21st . Even in Central London snow lay to a depth of 5-6ins . The weather was intensely cold so that snow persisted and the parks and secluded parts of the city presented a typical Christmas card scene with buildings, trees and ground all covered in snow.

Mean Temps F(Greenwich) 24th 25th 26th

1938 33.1 32.1 33.3

1961 30.7 30.0 33.5

1962 30.7 30.5 29.1

2009 Tempting fate I know

Edited December 7, 2009 by charlton north-downs

[Thundery wintry showers]

Indeed, here we have it:

http://www.tutiempo.net/en/Climate/TYNEMOUTH/12-1938/32620.htm

Maxima of 41-42F on 22-24 December at Tynemouth.

[stewfox]

The old links seem to have been lost so I have updated this thread.

Christmas Day 1938 was a white Christmas across many parts of the UK,

Are takes my back, I had long retired by then so could enjoy the weather that it bought ?

On a serious point probably explains why my mum was Born December 1939, too cold to be doing much a full year before ?.

Edited December 7, 2009 by Thundery wintry showers
No need to quote several large images from the original post

[Weather-history]

Often forgotten is how mild December 1938 was until this easterly kicked in. The CET up to the 14th December was 7.2C

Also the pressure gradient before the easterly developed was steep in the North Sea with an almost continuous gale for about 4 or 5 days in that area.

Bonacina's snow analysis has this extended winter down as snowy. For a long time, I have accepted Bonacina's analysis but recently as I have read more detailed monthly reports and I have increasingly become sceptical of some of them.

November to mid December 1938 was virtually snowless, then there was the snowy episode in the week before Christmas and there were two short snowy episodes in January but that was about it. The week before Christmas was snowy but the snowfalls were concentrated in specific short periods during this winter so to me the analysis is askewed because it gives the impression that snowfalls were frequent during the extended season when infact they weren't.

Edited December 8, 2009 by Mr_Data