HARD WINTERS AT HOME. 12 Mar 1886. I’m stunned. Journalists so curious about extreme weather variation they did some research. Back then they had to get off their butt and go to the archive to dig out some files and research them. Now they can just jump to the first idiotic idea that comes to mind and they’ve done a days work. With all of history just a few clicks away.
HARD WINTERS AT HOME. (1886, March 12). Newcastle Morning Herald and Miners’ Advocate (NSW : 1876 – 1954), p. 5. Retrieved January 18, 2020, from https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/138801496?searchTerm=hot%20summers%20and%20cold%20winters&searchLimits=#
A hard winter is sufficiently rare in the South of England to set people talking about it when it does occur.
Rain we are used to, and fog; but severe and long continued frost does not happen, as a rule, oftener than once in four or five years. The readiest proof of this is the fact that skating and sliding are possible in London only at about that interval.
Very seldom indeed are the ornamental waters in our parks frozen sufficiently to bear in two consecutive winters.
Either a very hot summer or a very cold winter suggests to the historically-minded reminiscences of equal or greater heat or cold in the past, and to those of a scientific turn
the inquiry whether there is any law of periodicity which regulates the occurrence of exceptional weather.
It is the popular belief, no doubt, that the summers used to be hotter in England and the winters colder in the days of our grandfathers than they are now. But this opinion is not
borne out by such records of temperature as are available.
It is a fact, perhaps, that no person now living can remember another summer so hot and dry for such a long period as that of 1826, or another winter like that of 1814. It is certain, at any rate, with regard to the winters, that the Thames has not been frozen over at London Bridge for seventy years.
But very hot summers and very cold winters were always the exceptions, and, because they were exceptions, lived in people’s memories, while the numerous years of ordinary weather passed
out of mind. There was, no doubt, at least one winter in the last century, when, if we may trust the records of the time, an altogether abnormal degree of cold was experienced.
It occurred in 1796, and it is stated that on Christmas Day in that year the thermometer
actually fell in London to sixteen degrees below zero, indicating forty-eight degrees of frost. The exactitude of the observation is possibly open to
question ; meteorological instruments were much less perfect in those days than they are now. Still there is no doubt that the severity of the frost was extreme, and its occurrence on Christmas Day would ensure its being remembered and talked of for many succeeding years.
Looking back over the last half century, a certain degree of countenance is afforded by the survey to the opinion that very exceptionally severe winters occur at intervals of twenty, or possibly, ten years.
The winter of 1840 was extremely severe, so was that of 1860, and so again was that of 1880.The hard winter of 1870, when the German army was encamped before Paris, and when the steam navigation of the Thames above bridge was interrupted by floating ice for a
fortnight, is still vividly remembered, and this occurred ten years after the severe frost of 1860, the intervening years having been comparatively mild.
The winter of 1850, however, was not a particularly sharp one, as it should have been if hard weather is to be expected at decennial intervals. On the hole, it cannot be said that, as regards
periodicity, we have got beyond some coincidences, which are nevertheless worth bearing in mind with a view to future observations; nor can much more be said of the signs by which an
exceptionally severe winter is preceded.
That of 1837 8, which occasioned a greater destruction of trees and shrubs commonly
reported hardy than any other on record, was preceded by a mild autumn, and did not set in till near the middle of January. So mild was the previous month that, as the Gardeners Magazine remarked, in a retrospect of the season, Christmas Day might have been mistaken for a day in April.
This, however, seems to be an exception; the rule appears to hold good very generally that a cold summer and autumn indicate an unusually cold winter. The summer of 1836 was remarkably cold and wet. A heavy fall of snow occurred in the beginning of October, and the winter which followed was a severe one. The severe and long continued frost of 1840-1 was likewise heralded by a cold summer.
Still more remarkable was the case of 1860. The summer of that year was one of the coldest and wettest ever known in some places snow fell in July and, as already remarked, it was followed by a winter of unexceptional severity. Our last severe winter, too, that of 1880, followed on a cold summer, and it will remembered that a very heavy fall of snow occurred in London and in Southern England generally in the early days of October, occasioning in some places great des-
truction of trees, through the overloading of the folage. In 1885, for the first time on record, snow fell in London before September was out, and if the experience of the years cited is a safe guide the winter in which we now find ourselves should prove a severe one.
It is equally worthy of notice, as bearing on the periodicity of hot and cold cycles, that none of the hard winters mentioned have been followed, any more than they have been preceded, by warm summers. There were but a very few weeks of warm weather in 1837 or 1839. The sum-
mers of 1841 and 1861 were both cold, and so was that which followed frost of five years ago.
A short spell of extraordinary heat occurred in the last-named year, in July, but it was
followed by such a sudden and extreme change that the recorded temperature of the month, as well as that of the whole summer, fell below the average.
The old adage tells us that ” a green Yule maketh a fat church yard.” For the last 130 years, at
any rate, a green Yule has been rather the rule than the exception. A frosty Christmas Day is, indeed, much of a rarity. The traditional association of frost with the festival has, however, a
foundation in truth. Before the alteration of the style, when Christmas fell on what is now Jan. 6
Twelfth Day, or Old Christmas Day it was very often frosty, as that day still frequently is a tendency to increased cold usually being manifested immediately after the winter solstice.
This tendency is matter of common observation, and gave rise to the well-known proverb, ” As the day lengthens, the cold strengthens.” The popular belief, however, that a hard winter is good for the public health could not survive the test of accurate statistics. The young and strong
and well-to-do may experience a sense of exhilaration, and perhaps really enjoy better health; but the inevitable connection between a low state of the thermometer in winter and a high
death-rate has now been established as firmly as any statistical fact whatever.
The breaking-up of a long and hard frost has been supposed to have some connection with the prevalence of severe epidemics of influenza, and the outbreaks of that disease which occurred in 1837 and in 1841 give some countenance to the opinion. On the other hand, by far the most severe influenza epidemic of modern times that of the closing months of 1847, when the weekly mortality in London exceeded that of the choleral year 1882 occurred during weather of exceptional mildness.
The fact seems to be that neither very cold winters nor very hot summers in these latitudes are much to be desired. One of the very healthiest summers on record was the cold, dull, and rainy
one of 1860, just.as the mild winters of recent years have told their tale in the favorable returns of the Registrar General. Globe.