On Saturday, 16 April 2016 10:06:24 UTC+1, Col wrote:

I sometimes wonder if the weather gods are mocking snow
lovers. You couldn't get synoptics like this for love nor
money back in that insanely mild December we've
just had but here we are towards the back end of April.
I'm not over-excited mind. A proper covering would be
interesting but the thought of watching wet snow swirling
around in a raw wind without an hope of settling isn't
something that fills me with much anticipation.
Still, heavy snow at the end of April is hardly unprecedented.
April 1981, anyone?

I can't understand Will's remorse at the snow buggering off PDQ if we are not going to have the clear skies that go with it.

This summer reminds me of 1952, not because I can remember it but because I was looking at a painting of Sunny Stoke while I was in hospital this morning.

Scores of bottle kilns all sending children's picture book smoke stacks up to heaven where it fed the rooftops so well that they invented snow shovels for removing the vegetation it produced.

Talking about it to a civil engineer a few hours later, we agreed it must have been healthy enough, except when foggy overcast hampered the process. He remarked that houses were built without damp-courses and that old people smelled of mothballs and mildew on such occasions.

Without central heating, such overcast would regularly kill people with poor lungs. So that is something like twice in a lifetime but not for others.