"Dave Cornwell" wrote in message
...
Mine a-

1962/63 winter
1987 "Great Storm"
1976 Hot long summer.


Like some others, I've moved around a bit but these are my main memories:

First one is the 1962/63 winter in NE England (County Durham)
After an early week long snow incident in mid Nov '62, a few cold frosty
days over Christmas were followed on Boxing Day by the first proper snow.
Initially only a fairly thin wet cover but enough to try out one of my
Christmas toys of a sledge. The next day a much better snowfall, then over
the next 3 months with various snow 'topups', it got more use by me than all
following winters put together until final disposing in 2003 although I
think my younger brothers got a fair amount of use from it in 1979.

Later 1960's years in the E Midlands (Leicestershire) produced winters with
varying degrees of snow (1965-66 being probably the best) but the next major
one after above was:

Friday Feb 7 1969. After an afternoon of heavy snow and an, in those days
rare, early school closure, about 8" was followed by a cold, clear evening
and some great sledging conditions, repeated over the weekend days. The Feb
7th snowfall was not to be beaten in depth until 1979.

No major Summer memories of that decade.

1970. The next one, by now in Macclesfield, Cheshire, is a short snowy spell
over Christmas 1970 (Christmas Day was a Friday), not particularly
disruptive although my Auntie & Cousin had some difficulties in getting to
my Mum & Dads house for Christmas. My first white Christmas memory.

1975 & 1976 Summers, still in Macclesfield. The long drawn out hot spells,
particularly in 1976 which unusually, I have memories of the hot weather
being accompanied by a fairly strong NE wind on many days which tempered the
heat but made the drought worse. The heat, but not drought, ended abruptly
on the late Aug Bank Holiday Monday. There were some thunderstorms but the
main rain was still a couple of weeks away, beginning mid Sept.

The following winter 1976/77 had a long cold spell in December with much
rime followed by the first serious disruptive snowfall (Jan 1977) since
those of 1969 above.

1978/79 winter produced the first long cold spell since 1963. On Jan 1/2,
snow fell with an intensity that produced my worst locally observed
disruption since 1969 and a level dept hof 1ft (30cm), the first time I'd
seen a higher depth since Feb 1969. This was followed by a winter in the
Manchester/Macclesfield area that produced more snow & frost by the end of
March than the rest of that decade put together.

1981/82, by now in Southampton. Jan 8/9 '82 produced a long 'blizzard' that
produced similar depths to those of 1979 but nothing like that recorded in
some stations to the NW in the W Midlands/S Wales region. Dec 1981 was a
white Christmas back in the 'family' home area of Macclesfield.

Both 1983 & 1984 produced long hot summers in the Southampton area.

Jan 1987 produced the same cold mentioned by others. A max on Mon 12th
of -7C was accompanied by frost on the inside of the utility room door! The
12/13th gave about 30cm of snow but after that, a slow thaw reduced the snow
to nothing after about a week and the winter was otherwise uneventful.

Winter 1988/89. After a short cold spell in mid November, was the mildest,
snow free one remembered.

Summer 1989 a long, reasonably hot summer during which I moved to Central
Scotland. The summer there ended early Aug, just after I got there, but
continued further south until late Sept.

Summer 1995 was long, hot & dry in Scotland. Even June was good there
compared to further south. This was followed by a mild autumn, only to be
followed by an abrupt sudden change to winter in Dec 1995.

Dec 1995/Feb 1996. An extremely cold month with snow and cold over
Christmas. Glasgow Airport recorded -19C mins on 2 days with a neighbour
claimimg their car thermometer had got to -23C. The rest of the winter had
snowy spells especially mid Feb which produced probably the worst 'blizzard'
I have known with 10ft drifts. The M74 was closed for a while at this time.
However, it was short lived.

From there I went to Rugby in 1998, then to Malvern in 2002 with no major
weather events in that time in my areas.

Summer 2003. The next long hot one. We had the heat & drought but not the
records of further south.

Summer 2006. A hot dry June & July that was replaced by a much more normal
August.

2007. Feb produced a couple of days of heavy, disruptive snowfall on 8th/9th
in an otherwise uneventful winter. By April 2007, spring was more like early
summer but by July, the rain was notable, producing the floods that are well
documented. July 20/21st was the wettest period.

2009/2010 produced a snowy but not notably cold winter with disruptive snow
in both Jan & Feb.

Dec 2010 produced a snowy, cold month with the cold being second only to
that of 1995/96 above in Scotland. My own weather station recorded a winter
min of -14 early on 27th. Many sub tropical plants in the area were killed.

However, the main weather memory of all for me has to be Sunday 5th June
1983 in Eastleigh, just north of Southampton. After a 'perfect' early summer
day on 4th, that evening had thunderstorms rumbing away to the SE over the
Portsmouth/Solent area. These went on into the night but by the morning of
the 5th had died out and the early day was reasonable but with strange cloud
formations and many different wind directions at different heights from NE
at the surface to SE, then S then SW at various layers above. By 12:00, the
first of 6 severe thunderstorms had begun and these continued until 20:00
hrs with distinct breaks between each one but never out of audible range of
the one just gone or the next one coming. Had this been at night rather than
in the day, it would have been even more impressive & memorable. They were,
by far, the most severe storms Ihave witnessed, especially the first one
between 12:00 & 13:00 hrs where Radio 1 on AM was virtually inaudible for a
while due to the frequency of lighning discharges.

These storms of 5th marked the transition between a cold, wet spring and the
beginning of the hot 1983 summer referred to above, although it wasn't until
early July that the really hot weather began.

The event was discussed in Weather Magazine a year or so later in terms of
what the causes were.

Wetterzentralle archive shows the surface and 850 hPa conditions but if
anyone has 'real' weathermap of that day for 12:00, 18:00 & 00:00 on 6th,
I'd appreciate links or refs.

Thanks

--
Pete

Please take my dog out twice to e-mail

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