"Gavin Staples" wrote in message
...


Source: TWO.

My Comments:
This is a good discussion topic. This month
was the 2nd coldest of the 20th Century and as I have said before it
changed
the course of history due to its timing just after the war and the
shocking
hardship that is caused.
Over half a million emigrated in the next 4 years and close on a
million
within 10 years - many cited the hardship caused by this. I was told this
first hand when I lived in Australia in the late 1980s.
Onto the figures it is curious to see that the mean max was above 0C in
more places than I thought. The CET for this month was -1.9C the lowest
recorded in ANY February.
I would assume that when the temperature did get above 0C it was for
only a very short time, say an hour or two in the day. This would have
been
insufficient to melt the large amounts of snow.
Not surprisingly inland places such as Birmingham and Nottingham
recorded max temps averaging 0C and Birmingham had a mean of -2.8C.
I would attribute much of the extreme hardship of this month being
attributed to heavy dependence on coal at the time and the frequent
blizzards blocking roads which in those days had a fraction of the traffic
on them compared to today. It was almost impossible to move coal.




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************************************************** **********
Gavin Staples.

Horseheath. Cambridge, UK. 93m ASL.
www.gavinstaples.com
site regularly updated

"Often the hands will solve a mystery that the intellect has struggled
with
in vain". ~Carl G. Jung

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2005.
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Thanks Gavin for reminding me about some of the features about this
month. One aspect which I don't remember being mentioned before was the
effect of the snowy weather had on the football season which used to end
at the very end of April with the Cup Final following on the first
Saturday in May. In 1947 there were so many matches postponed in January
and February that there was a full fixture list throughout May and the
final few matches were played on 14 June when Sheffield Utd ( this was
the last team to complete its Division 1 programme) were at home to Stoke
City.
I was a schoolboy during that winter and in southern England there were
several partial thaws during February when some of the snow melted but
within a day or two the frost and snow would return. I used to cycle to
school most days and there weren't many cars on the road; also there
wasn't much road gritting. My chief memory of this is that the roads became
covered in rutted snow which, when the frost returned, froze solid so it
became difficult to steer the bike along the frozen ruts. I seem to remember
falling off quite often.
My family lived about a mile or two from a gas works and people used to go
there with prams and hand carts to queue for coke because of the coal
shortage.
In the following summer, to conserve electricity, double summertime was
introduced. The clocks were put forward an hour in March and then put
forward another hour a few weeks later. In June and July it stayed light
until almost 11pm. in the south.
Peter Clarke
Ewell 55m ( but living in Teddington , Middx in 1947)
PS. I can't end this without mentioning the glorious August of 1947 when I
spent many hours at Lords cricket ground where I saw Denis Compton score
several hundreds in a seemingly effortless and carefree way in front of
huge crowds which was , and is, unforgettable.