Does that mean that any previous mild winters were just one long 'suckers
gap'?










"Pete B" wrote in message
...
While we've all been considering whether the present mild spell is just a
short gap between cold spells (although that seems less & less likely with
time), the past records show what must have been the ultimate Suckers Gap
and up to the end of the cold spell last week, the overall situation then
was not that much different to now, except maybe then a bit colder during
the cold spells:


Relevant snippets taken from the published records:

December: After a mild start with frequent rain, and some rivers being in
flood, then a short foggy spell, a cold easterly began and predominated
from 15th to 21st due to the influence of a large high from Siberia.
During this time, a night min of -12C was recorded at Kew and the day max
on 22nd was -5C at Farnborough. A thaw and milder temperatures then
followed until the end of the year.

January: At the beginning of the month, renewed easterlies brought cold
weather until the 8th during which time -4C was recorded as a maximum at
Little Rissington in The Cotswolds on 6th before snow spread NE'wards on
7th, followed by a general thaw on 8th.

A very mild spell (in what turned out to be the "Ultimate Suckers Gap")
was then in place by 11th during which a night min of 12C was recorded at
Leeming on 15th with a day max of 14C in several places on 16th.

By 18th, a high approached from France with pressure being highest off NW
Norway by 20th. The high then moved slowly SE with night frost beginning
on 20th then followed by snow on 23rd.

The described January is of course that of 1947, the rest became well
remembered & recorded history :-).

Each winter, I often wonder what people thought about the winter during
that balmy mild spell, especially around the 16th and how much, if any,
indication they had of what was to follow! Also, I wonder how today's
computer models would have handled it all, both at the start and during
the progress of the cold through Feb and into March when the lows
gradually began tracking that bit further North as each one came through.