On Friday, March 29, 2013 4:12:12 PM UTC, Keith (Southend)G wrote:
This March cold CET being colder than both Jan and Feb, keeps getting compared to March 1962. Now 1962 was not a particularily good summer and we all know what winter followed. The bad feeling is linked to the lawn work I do, as each year seems to a number of challenges. But of course you can never get two months in a row to match and I am now wondering if we have started a period of drought with high pressure looking like taking command for some time ? Again, my lawn work, I hope to be over-seeding once it warms up, but for it then to turn dry would be another problem. I've been having another read of a book called 'Since Records Began', by Paul Simons, which looks at some of the historic weather events and also there effect on the shape of this Country, in that it often defeated the French and Spanish. But what strikes me is that the extremes we talk about today, seem to be no different to what they had in the 1600, 1700 & 1800 centuries and in many cases they were worse then. Keith (Southend) http://www.southendweather.net "Weather Home & Abroad"

Luke Howard paints an often bleak picture of the climate of London in his observations from the early 1800s to 1830. Just three examples include recording a low of 1F (-18C), the River Lea being 'a mile wide' with flood water between Bow and Stratford, frequent ice floes in the Thames with the recording of the last Frost Fair in 1814. Even taking into account the urban heat island effect we've yet to see anything like those extremes