HARD WINTERS

Dominion, Volume 11, Issue 155, 20 March 1918, Page 4

HARD WINTERS

FAMOUS BRITISH RECORDS. ' The hardest winter in the last cen<» tury was probably that of 1894-5, s» far as Great Britain was concerned.* In that year there was.a cold spell of 70 days' in which the average daily temperature' was below the normal by '7 degrees. The intensest cold was observed between February 6 and ll» 1895. On the Btli Loughborough registered minus 4deg. Fahrenheit, or 33 degrees of frost. On the 11th Braemar reported minus 17, or 49, degrees of), frost. This is probably one of th« lowest temperatures ever observed m Great Britain i-ince accurate instruments were introduced. In England the lowest trustworthy reading seems to have been 47 degrees of frost, noted on Christmas Day, 1860, at Cheadle, in Staffordshire, though 75 degrees of frost are said to have been observed on high ground in Derbyshire in 1895. Last, year on I'ebruary 5 o» degrees of frost were observed _ at Market HRrborough. . ' Almost as severe as the winter ot 1894-5, and even more terrible in its effect on animal life, was the winter of 1890-1. In the coldest period of this there wero 59 days on which the temperature was 9 degrees below the average. Frost sot in on November 25 ana lasted till January 22, hut the extremest cold registered was 31 degrees of frost at Stokesay on December 11. The frost was steady, without great oscillations in temperature. In Marcli there were terrific snowstorms in Southern England, the fall reaching 12m. in 6 0f 'still earlier winters the coldest were those of 1886, 1879-30, 18/ M, 1860, 1855, and 1814. (Two of these, 1355 and 1870-1, were winters of war.) In 1870 Lake Constance was, twice frozen over, an event which is very nre In 1860 Derwentwater was a sheet of ice and the Thames was a mass o ice-floes. In 1814, for the last time on record, the Thames was firmly frozeT over (on February 1) between Wackfriars Bridge and London. Bridge, and booths-were built on the ice. Twenty inches of snow (according to the "Annual Register") fell at llymonth; the Solway Firth was a great icofield.-O.T.E.