“Climate disruption” before the current lunacy of “CO2 caused extreme weather” era
By Paul Homewood
The Great Freeze of 1963 was the coldest winter in the UK for over 200 years. However, the winter of 1947, while not as cold, was one of the snowiest.
The UK Met Office describe what the conditions were like.
Thousands of people were cut off for days by snowdrifts up to seven metres deep during the winter of 1947, which saw exceptional snowfall. Supplies had to be flown in by helicopter to many villages, and the armed forces were called in to help clear roads and railways.
Between January and March that year, snow fell every day somewhere in the country for 55 days straight. Much of this settled because temperatures stayed very low, just above freezing most days.
No-one expected this winter to be severe, as January started with very mild temperatures at up to 14 °C recorded. This was soon to change, however. An area of high pressure moved over southern Scandinavia, setting up a weather pattern which dominated the UK for the rest of the month. The first snow came on 23 January, falling heavily over southern England. Blizzard conditions occurred across the south-west of England, leaving many villages in Devon isolated.
The cold, snowy weather continued through February and into March. Any breaks in the cold weather were short-lived.
February 1947 was the coldest February on record in many places. Woburn in Bedfordshire registered a low of of -21 °C early on 25 February.
If February hadn’t been bad enough, March was even worse. In the first half of the month, there were strong gales and heavy snowstorms, making for blizzard conditions. On 4 and 5 March, heavy snow fell over most of England and Wales, with severe snow drifts forming. On 6 March, drifts were five metres deep in the Pennines and three metres deep in the Chilterns.
On 10 and 11 March Scotland had its heaviest snowfall of the winter, with snow drifts up to seven metres deep reported by 12 March. The snowstorm heading over Scotland was to be the last over the UK for this cold spell, however. As it moved away, temperatures were already rising in the very south west of the UK. Temperatures rapidly got up to about 10 °C, and the leftover snow began to thaw rapidly. This created a serious problem. The ground was still frozen solid due to the weeks of cold weather, leaving the melting snow with nowhere to go.
As the warmer weather moved across the UK, the melt-water poured into rivers and caused many to burst their banks. Flooding problems began to spread across England from the south west, as a new depression came in from the Atlantic, bringing rain and severe gales. During the afternoon of 16 March, winds over southern England averaged about 50 knots, with gusts of 80-90 knots. This caused damage to buildings and caused even more problems as the strong winds created waves which pounded and even broke some flood defences.
River levels continued to rise. The banks of the Trent burst at Nottingham on 18 March and hundreds of homes were flooded, many to first floor level. While floods in the south-west England began to subside, other rivers continued to rise in eastern England. The Wharfe, Derwent, Aire and Ouse all burst their banks and flooded a huge area of southern Yorkshire. The town of Selby was almost completely under water. Only the ancient abbey and a few streets around the market place escaped inundation. Seventy per cent of all houses in the town were flooded. The flooding issues continued into the spring, bringing a nasty end to the cold and snowy winter.
For the future Rolling Stone Bill Wyman, growing up in Penge, South London, the atrocious weather meant that his bricklayer father was laid off work and no money came in.
‘There wasn’t enough food to go round, so he’d hit a couple of us, send us to bed without any dinner,’ one of Bill’s brothers recalled. ‘”Get to bed, don’t argue!”
Then you’d get hit, kicked up the stairs – vroom, that was it. And in the house we lived in, you didn’t want to go to bed. It was freezing, really nasty, with ice on the inside of the windows.’
Pictures, though, tell the story best of all.
Hardy cyclist David Joel cycling on a frozen Thames near Windsor Bridge in London during the 1947 cold snap
Winter test: A bus abandoned in a snow drift on the Poole-Dorchester road near Bryantspuddle in January 1947
Cold diggers: Men clearing snow on the Gravesend-Meopham road in Kent
Wrong type of snow: Tunnels to front door of a house covered by snow in the Peak District, Derbyshire in 1947
Snow drifts at Farley
The aftermath – floods in York
The finest minds of climate science tell us that snow is caused by global warming. It really must have been scorching back in 1947!
Mike Ozanne says:
February 25, 2013 at 9:45 am
“Regarding deliveries by helicopter it’s most unlikely that more than a small number were carried out as the RAF had only recently started to acquire helicopters. In 1947 the airdrops of feed for farm animals for example was by fixed wing Dakotas. In the bad winter of 1955 Operation Snowdrop was a similar operation which did use helicopters which was also done in 1963.”
771 Squadron Fleet Air Arm had been flying the Sikorsky H4 Hoverfly since Feb 1945 and handed them on to 705 Sqn FAA in May 1947. British built helicopters from Westland and Bristol were being acquired but weren’t in service before the early ’50′s
Precisely, which is why I think there were very few helicopter drops in 1947, there weren’t many of them and they didn’t have much carrying capacity, DC3 Dakotas did most of the feed drops. In 55 Snowdrop used Whirlwinds (and Sycamores) mainly with more capacity and I recall them being used in 63.
For everyone doubting the use of helicopters in 1947.
The Sikorsky S-4 became the first large-scale mass produced helicopter in 1944. 131 R-4’s were produced before being replaced by the R-5 and R-6. In all, Sikorsky would produce over 400 helicopters before the end of World War II. The R-4 was the only Allied helicopter to see service in World War II, primarily being used for rescue in Burma and Alaska, and other areas with harsh terrain.
The German’s also used helicopters (in small numbers) during WW II, in fact the Flettner Fl 282 (“Hummingbird”), during the Battle of the Bulge a formation of five of these aircraft conducted the world’s first helicopter strike against armour. Operating low over the Ardennes Forest they destroyed two American tanks at a loss of two of their own, one to a British Spitfire, the other to groundfire.
The first U.S. air-mail service to use a helicopter, Los Angeles Airways, was in 1947.
See! It was colder in 1947 and 1963. That proves Global Warming! (Again.)
We’re doomed!
Jimbo
Houghton, former head of the Met Office said in 2007:
Wales Online – June 30 2007
“Snowlines are going up in altitude all over the world. The idea that we will get less snow is absolutely in line with what we expect from global warming.”
I would not bet on this statement to hold water . CET WINTER TEMPERATURES have been in a slow decline since 1988 and and 4 of the last 6 winters have been below the norm of about 4 C
I think it is great, every time a person such as Paul Homewood simply gives the history of past snows, (and hurricanes and droughts and what-have-you.) It is important, because in the simplest way it counters the propaganda of the various Alarmists, such as McKibben, who attempt to convince the gullible that we are in the midst of something “unprecedented.”
It is odd to compare the probable intentions of such Alarmists with the recent history of China. The whacko idea that we can replace tried-and-true forms of keeping ourselves warm with gizmos such as wind turbines and solar panels is a bit like China replacing tried-and-true methods with “The Great Leap Forward.”
Just as the “Great Leap Forward” was an unmitigated disaster, it looks like the energy policy of Europe is going to be an unmitigated disaster.
And just as, in order to cover-up the “Great Leap Foreward’s” totally botched efforts to “improve” things, China next went through the “Cultural Revolution,” (which was a way of getting rid of all the teachers, historians, and elders who would, could and did point out things had been botched,) the people in Europe most responsible for the botched energy policies will seek to cover-up their failures by deleting evidence they botched things. (Hopefully they will only attempt to delete data, and not delete actual people.)
The best way to resist such fools is to refuse to let them erase and delete the past, and keep them accountable. Just bring up the history of what the weather has done, and what they have done as people, and Truth becomes their judge.
1947, 18 years in the Pre-Mannian Era of Global Warming and 6 years in the Post-Hansen Era of Global Warming.
Egads ! A major discrepancy ! Climate ‘SCIENCE’ is PERFECT and such discrepancies ABOMINABLE.
Tisk tisk. The error is the square root of the sum of the square of errors !: Thus,
Error = (18^2 + 6^2)^1/2, i.e. Error = 18.97 years.
Therefore, Human Global Warming began in 1994 one measly year before the SAR !
And Little Jimmy is still ‘Director’ of GISS ! What You Say !!
XD
I believe that the house/pub in the picture above is the Wanted Inn in Sparrowpit, High Peak, which used to be called the Devonshire Arms (it was renamed in 1956). Google Maps image from a similar vantage point of the pub today:
http://goo.gl/maps/Xaw71
Note the telegraph pole and chimneys that match the picture exactly.
If anyone’s in the area, I can highly recommend it for good beer, and good food!
Rhodri
Good spot. I’ve been past a few times on the way to Buxton.
Actually, the questions about snowy winters in the UK don’t depend on temperature other than it needs to be cold enough to snow, not rain, what it actually depends upon is one of three scenarios:
1. A stable cold high pressure’s edge remaining over the UK, causing Atlantic depressions to stop when they hit it depositing snow.
2. Fronts coming from Central Russia to the UK on Easterly Winds.
3. A stable flow of arctic air bearing snow, assisted by a stable blocking high pressure to the West of Ireland.
What people should actually look at is not UK snowfall but Europe-wide snowfall, US-wide snowfall, North Asian snowfall.
Those big land masses are a far better indicator of temperature and snowfall than a maritime island on the edge of one of those land masses.
The really rough winter in the U.S., especially the western U.S., is yet known as the “blizzard of ’49”. This actually began as a blizzard at Thanksgiving 1948 and continued as a series of blizzards throughout the winter of 1949, the worst one of which was at New Year’s Day 1949. People now have confounded in their memories that winter season as one gargantuan storm. However, weather was awful into the Sonoran desert in Arizona and northern Mexico and into Eastern Oregon and Washington. The worst was centered in Wyoming, Colorado, the Dakotas and Nebraska I think.
Serves to show such winters were there in the past, and history entirely.
Now last 15 winters in Holland have been normal to record mild. Not even ten year periods exist before this where no cold winters ocurred.
Alfred Alexander says:
February 25, 2013 at 4:09 am
Ice on the inside of windows,that was every winter
in Nant-y-Glo Pennsylvania.
I am glad to see that old Welsh names are still used in Pennsylvania. Nant-y-Glo means the Stream of Coal – i.e. a stream flowing through an area where coal is found. There is a village in Monmouthshire in southeast Wales with the same name.
In 1947 Britain had a very large coal mining industry although, as one of the other comments on this blog mentioned, there were problems in distributing the coal to where it was needed. Today Britain has very few coal mines left. Wales no longer has any deep coal mines. The last one closed five years ago. Britain is now a coal importer. A significant proportion of our electricity supply comes from coal fired power stations but the British government, with incredible stupidity, has decided to close them all in the next few years in order to meet European Union targets for cutting CO2 emissions.
The government imagines that wind turbines can make up the difference. Presumably when the wind is not blowing everyone feeling cold can go and blow on the turbine blades to generate some power! If you are reading this Josh how about using that idea for a cartoon?
In contrast the German government has decided to build a lot of new coal fired power stations. For some reason it seems to think it is more important to keep Germany functioning normally than it is to reduce CO2 levels! How backward can you get?
I was 19 in 1947 and lived in the City of London. There were helicopters belonging to the R.A.F and perhaps the Navy. Reported in the newspapers Only a few people had TV. I have a faint recollection of U.S Forces who had stations in the U.K helping out.with U.S helicopters but that might be 1963. The Cold War was beginning and we had U.S forces in the U.K and Germany.
It was icey in the streets but the City streets were cleared by machine and hand shovel., open Squares were snowy though.
Ice inside windows was common ( frost made beautiful patterns).and coalgas for heating and cooking supplies were low. What with pipes freezing it was quite a problem.
Sorry slip of the typing fingers I was NIne not nineteen in 1947!!
Otter:
Re. your question about Arctic temps in the early ’40s, this might help:
https://www.google.ca/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=3&cad=rja&ved=0CEEQFjAC&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.vancouvermaritimemuseum.com%2Fpage186.htm&ei=C1ItUb8NyOaKAubCgNgL&usg=AFQjCNEHzBpfhBQxm87FKFk58to1Owa6yQ&sig2=8i6AuOFUzzDQza5PoCPpmw
jorgekafkazar says:
February 25, 2013 at 9:40 am
“…The only saving grace for us is that winters like those in ’47, ’63, ’75′-’78 are rare.” –JP
“Of course, at the time, despite the temperatures, the winter of ’47 was still a time to rejoice that Great Britain would never be ruled by unelected European oligarchs from a city starting with “B.” Oh, wait…”
Brilliant, JKK. Wish I’d said that!
Reblogged this on Goaty's News.
“Of course, at the time, despite the temperatures, the winter of ’47 was still a time to rejoice that Great Britain would never be ruled by unelected European oligarchs from a city starting with “B.” Oh, wait…” — jorgekafkazar
Richards in Vancouver says: Brilliant, JKK. Wish I’d said that!
Ta.