White Easter? It’s looking more like a wild one

FLURRIES of snow have caught people off-guard across Devon and Wales over recent days. “Never seen snow fall so thick,” one Plymouth resident told a reporter as it drifted down over the city.

Meanwhile as several inches settled across Dartmoor, children have been hauling their sleds out of cold storage and bombing down the tors.

This time last year it was the same. In Sheffield we had nearly 12 inches fall in what has been logged into local weatherlore as: ‘The Great Snow Storm of March 2023’.

Looking back, there was also the similarly imaginatively-named, “Great Blizzard of March 1891”, which dumped snowdrifts 15ft high across Cornwall, Devon and Somerset. As was reported, “no such storm had visited the west of England within remembrance”.

March snowfall always brings surprise, what with it being the time for blooming flowers and egg hunts. But a White Easter is actually more common than a White Christmas. According to Met Office figures, snow or sleet falls on an average of 3.9 days in December, compared with 5.3 days in January, 5.6 days in February and 4.2 days in March.

Folklore has it that you never get both. Most of the old sayings frame them as opposing points in the calendar. “Green Christmas, White Easter” goes one such saying and, “at Christmas meadows green, at Easter covered with frost”. Perhaps that was true in previous decades, but this year the weather for both of them is similar: damp, windy with daytime temperatures hovering around 12C.

Today expect heavy downpours, particularly in southern and western areas. There will be a fierce wind whipping around as well.

Easter Sunday should, however, be benign, with warm sunshine lingering over the north and east, before the squalls stir up once more on Monday. Not a White Easter then, but a wild one.

Nelson whips up surf in West Bay, Dorset