50 years ago today

[mike Meehan]

Peter Cockroft reminded me of the spell we had of foggy weather 50 years ago when it was a real pea souper of freezing fog. It was probably the last we ever had like that because shortly afterwards the Clean Air Act kicked in. At that time I was a scientific assistant at Heathrow and recall a temp of virtually a -5C for a few days.

December of 1962 was pretty cool with ice starting to form on the Thames - my mate Banny had a houseboat on the Thames near Richmond and there was ice on his walls ON THE INSIDE!

[PeteB]

Last Pea Souper smog I saw was when I was growing up in Birkenhead, must have been in the late 50's I guess. I don't remember any thick fog in December 1962 but by that time I was living at 350 feet where we never get fog. There must have been a fairly thick fog on Merseyside on Christmas eve though, I actually thought they'd had snow when we arrived for Christmas Dinner.

If there's one aspect of the past weather that I don't miss then it's freezing smog, coughing out lumps of soot is no joke at all.

Pete

Edited December 6, 2012 by PeteB

[Methuselah]

I can remember that, Mike. Everyday, going to school wrapped up like a mummy. And waking-up to a heavy, dense, greeny-yellow murk, that wasn't made any better by having two sets of brickworks near-by...

[Thundery wintry showers]

Indeed, early December 1962 was anticyclonic with some smog, as pollutants got trapped underneath an inversion:

http://www.wetterzen...00119621205.gif

And a further 10 years beforehand, there was an even more severe outbreak of smog from a near-identical synoptic setup:

http://www.wetterzen...00119521205.gif

Had it not been for the Clean Air Acts of 1956 and 1958, the December 1962 smog may well have proved at least as deadly as the December 1952 one, but nonetheless it did take some time for the UK to fully adapt to those Acts and thus we still saw approximately 750 smog-related deaths in the London area in early Dec 1962. In early Dec 1952, the overall death toll was at least 4,000.

http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/education/teens/case-studies/great-smog

Edited December 6, 2012 by Thundery wintry showers