Dreaming of a white Easter? It’s not so unlikely
I MUST confess to never having previously heard of a white Easter. But supposedly there is such a thing, and the bookies are taking bets.
For those hoping for sunshine, I’m afraid the odds are not good.
The Met Office says there is a high risk of cold northerly or easterly winds over Easter and into April. This means a “greater than normal chance of snow”.
I shall be in the eye of the storm. I am heading to Inverness to promote my new book (A Shadow Above: The Fall and Rise of the Raven, if you will pardon the plug) where the weather is forecast to be at its most severe.
Trilogies seem to be very much in fashion these days; they even turned Tolkien’s The Hobbit into one.
And this latest cold blast is the third instalment of the sudden stratospheric warming over the Arctic last month which has dragged in bitter easterly winds across Europe.
Fear not, though, even as far north as Inverness the forthcoming cold snap will not be as severe as the weather we experienced earlier this month.
A skim through the records reveals Britain is more likely to have snow in March than at Christmas.
Between 1981 and 2010 there was an average of 3.9 days with sleet or snow in December, compared with 4.2 days in March.
The big freeze of March 2013 was the coldest since 1962. Things turned so chilly, in fact, that it was colder than any of the winter months that year, something which had not occurred since 1937.
As late as April 25, 1981, meanwhile, 29cm of snow fell in my home city of Sheffield.
Like many of you, no doubt, this cold winter has left me longing for spring. And yet I must confess to still harbouring a giddy excitement at the prospect of more snow to come.
Perhaps they call this dreaming of a white Easter?