John Hall wrote:
In article ,
Dave.C writes:

As someone who experienced that winter I have noticed a couple of things
that reminded me of that March. I wonder if this spell had started with a
massive fall of snow what would have happened. For example I'm now looking
out of my window at yet another reasonable snow shower. That's 13
consecutive days now. This was quite common then, and in March it was
sometimes drizzly and fine snow. The ground was so frozen and with a foot of
frozen hard packed snow a slight thaw would have no effect. Some of the grey
murky days with temps around 1C were similar,


That sounds more like February, 1963 than March to me, though of course
a lot depended on just where in the UK you were. In Surrey, we benefited
from the wind veering to SE at the end of February. The shorter sea
track meant that the skies cleared, and the sun had enough power by then
to send the maximum temperature rocketing to a dizzy 6C by the start of
March, though there were still very sharp night frosts. Further north,
with the North Sea being so much colder than usual, no doubt grey and
cold conditions lasted somewhat longer. (ISTR Mike Tullett's info shows
Newcastle as being very slow to warm up.) I don't recall any snow that
March in Surrey, apart from one brief shower, and other than those hard
frosts at the start I don't think that there was any notably cold
weather that month in Surrey.


but then they would have no
impact and the snow cover over the deep frozen snow.
It wouldn't have to have been much colder - ask the people on the Kent
coast!


The North Sea is now down to about 5C, I believe. After such prolonged
cold, at the start of March, 1963 it can have been no more than 1 or 2C.
That would have made a big difference.

At the end of February 1963, the warmest part of the North Sea was no
more than 3 DegC. Near the coasts and over the Dogger Bank it was below
zero - possibly as low as MS 02.

My memory of March '63 is of the 6th (I think - it may have been the
5th) when the temperature reached about 6 DegC. The other observer at
RAE Bedford Met Office pointed out that it was the first day since
Boxing Day that we'd had a temperature above zero DegC. That was
counting temperatures in whole degrees so our highest max would only
have been 0.4 DegC.

Graham