Brace yourselves for a repeat of the Big Freeze of ’63
AFTER an early spring saw daffodils in bloom in December, we are bracing ourselves for the delayed arrival of a late winter in the week ahead.
Just as asparagus growers in Herefordshire are marvelling at their annual crop being ready a good four months ahead of the official season, which begins on April 23, an Arctic snow bomb is sweeping in from the north and may set in until March.
Is this the weather working like a pendulum? First it swings violently to one extreme – December has now been officially confirmed as the warmest on record at 46F (7.9C).
And then it compensates by swinging as far as it can the other way. Along come sub-zero blizzards from the Arctic and Siberia – already being called “The Beast from the East” – bringing in their wake snow, ice and, if experience is anything to go by, a total winter lockdown.
The approaching “whiteout” – already affecting northern Scotland (blighted Aberdeen has snow and floods) and due in most parts of Britain by mid-week – is being likened to the “Big Freeze” of 1963. Temperatures during that exceptionally cold winter dropped to -4F (-20C), with the sea freezing over, off the Kent coast.
But the whole business of making predictions based on past weather behaviour is currently in chaos, whether you are working in the Met Office, ordering seasonal clothing stock for your high-street retail chain or growing asparagus in Herefordshire.
As Professor Myles Allen, head of the Climate Dynamics Group at Oxford University, remarked this week: “Normal weather, unchanged over generations, is a thing of the past.”