I remember that winter very much.My sister was born on the 10th of February that year in 1979.The snow that fell on that day was unreal it was one bitterly cold and Snowy winter
I remember Bonfire Night of 1978. Very mild and foggy night...the smell of smoke in the air the next morning was really strong as there was still a lot of mist and low cloud. Never forgotten it.
remember the feb of 79 on the north east coast in amble could not get to school in alnwick for a few days think it started overnight thursday into frinday had a foot of snow on the friday morning . then another snow storm on the sunday night. on the monday you could not see the top of the fence along the riverbank between amble and warkworth. if i remember right had snow on the ground for nearly 2 weeks.
Great video Gav :), the winter of 1978/79 is my only memory, in 50 yrs, of a truly cold and severe winter. The snow drifted to 4ft deep against our north fence in Essex, the local tidal river froze over with ice 6 inches thick.
I remember the Winter of 1978/9 - it was fantastic. Really enjoyed watching this video. A few questions... Why are the low pressures marked with a 'T'? And, what do the shaded colours represent? It seems that it can be cold when the colours over the UK are shaded yellow. My memory of January around the 30th, was very snowy. Very heavy prolonged snowfall - we had moved house and this would have been on the 29th or 30th of January. I recall really heavy, deep snow the day after we moved. Schools were closed and it was a real winter wonderland. But, the chart for that period seems my memory is telling fibs. We were living in the north Midlands, just south of Sheffield.
Excellent archive Gav ,i remember this winter very well ,i was working for british gas as a service engineer at the time ,very busy trying to keep all the customers warm in country areas ,shovel in the van and snow chains..lol..
I remember this winter although I was only 16/17 years old. It started with a cold and wet summer of 1978 with continuous rain well into Nov. of 1978. In December, the weather changed into colder and drier weather which became more severe in January 1979. This extremely cold winter continued well into the spring of 1979 and the summer of that year was unusually cold. Also, the fall of 1979 was cold and the beginning of the winter that year was colder than normal. The year of of 1979 was the coldest year of the 20th century here in Iceland. All months of 1979 had temp below normal except February and December. Then, suddenly in December 1979, the weather changed and the weather of 1980 was back to normal.
I remember that winter, walking to school on my own with snow drifts taller than me. I think only about 8 people were in the class that day. Quite an adventure for a 9 year old. Can't imagine that happening these days. Good stuff. :)
I rember two major snow events, alas can't remember the years. In torbay then growing up, snow was only on dartmoor, used to be so frustrating seeing the glorious white snow in the distance. Now at 53 I still want to watch it fall in silince, then roll around in it, guess I'll always have love for it. Thank you for sharing your memories
We didn't suffer alone this winter. Across the U.S.A. the winter of 1978/1979 was brutally cold. January, 1979 is the coldest January on record for America as a whole. I reccomend you view the Northern Hemisphere charts on Wetterzentrale to see the depth of brutal cold that swept across the country at times. Also I reccomend looking at the chart for 10th of January, 1982. I actually went "wow"when I saw it. -40 upper air temperatures! Can you imagine a northerly that potent in this country? Great videos.
The 10th January, 1982, recorded the lowest ever UK temperature of minus 27. 2 degrees Celsius in Scotland. I remember, where I lived in England, the temperature fell to minus 26.1c on the 11 January, 1982 - still the lowest temperature ever recorded for England.
Love this Gavs , It started with rain and later on freezing rain ,0 degrees in the north and in the south 10 degrees , when arrived in the middle ( were I live ) the cold arrived with a lot of thunder and very dark sky ........................ the next day , they were ice skating , on the roads ............. the whole winter , was lots of snow , and lots of winter storms , still in may , very cold day times 6 degrees in the end there was 60 cm of ice in the ( sloten) Locks , still not a very severe winter , just a severe winter !
It occurs to me that if there had been some cold air already established during December (like Feb '47) it could of been one of the snowiest months ever, with those fronts constantly stalling. So while 1979 was impressive, it had even greater potential imo.
I remember that one well I that was my first winter at work I also cycled to work it was tricky with the ice and snow been out in some cold weather since then also recall winter 1969 1970 71/72 Not so much snow but bitter winds also 2009 to 2012 snow and cold winds never done me no harm.
We moved into our new house then. Though the house was big, we hadn't put in the central heating yet so it was freezing. My uncle was visiting from Ghana so that was a shock to the system for him. Seem to remember it being cold in January 1980 too, and my grandmother who had never left her village in Ghana saw snow for the first time. Poor nan thought it was some sort of curse🙄
I remember this winter as it was my first winter working as a postie near Glasgow. The temperature went as low a -24C during the night and -11C during the day. Metal gates were frozen shut as were letterboxes with the heat inside causing condensation which froze on the letterbox making it near impossible to post the mail. Multiply that by almost 600 twice a day and you can see what we were up against. Frozen moustache and eyelashes for what seemed like weeks left me wondering why I left my job as a baker!
I remember that weather in SW England, the snow started New Years Eve 1978. The snow was several feet deep. On a few days, and I remember reading the weather reports in a national newspaper, Torquay was actually the warmest place in the UK mid week, rising to 0 deg C. It lasted just one week, then mild air came back in from the SW, I remember that too, it rose to 10 deg C in a few hours. The snow didn't last long.
The spring of 1979 was the third wettest in the EWP series, and the wettest since 1818. For this reason, I had thought upon looking it would be worth its own series to look at the cool, wet weather (though 48 springs since 1766 have been cooler). In May 1979, in fact, the number of abandoned county cricket matches was the highest on record, more than in the comparably wet Mays of 1886, 1932 and 1967. I wonder if this relates to the chilly winter beforehand - a trait that may have been shared by the winter and spring of 1885/1886 when washouts were seen on a significant scale for the first time in county cricket history. In 1932, by contrast, January was very mild (not to the same record-breaking levels as in the eastern US - where the Lake Placid Olympics was severely affected - and North China) and February so dry as to reduce soil moisture problems from the cool, wet April and May even with uncovered pitches.
i remeber the blizzard very well it was new years eve 1978, the next day we woke up to at least 7 inches of snow, it was the first time i had really seen snow like this , i wnt for a walk up to the top of my hill and walked into drifts that were at least 4 feet deep, for the next week we went sledging at my local park, we had 6 days of unbroken sunshine, i see in you charts that there doesnt seem to be much in the way of high pressure ?
I’ve seen another historic video on this particular Winter elsewhere. So I came to look for Gav’s, as I didn’t recall watching this before . I recall a few bad winters at this time. But this was easily the worst. I was 6/7. It created the Winter of Discontent. Are there any parallels with this winter? I mean a Mild Autumn etc. Followed by a huge winter!
I forgot when I first commented here to note that, in fact, the autumn of 1978 was the driest on record in the 250-year (as of 2015) EWP series, with only 128.6 millimetres of precipitation. October 1978 was especially dry, being the last October to date with under 25.4 millimetres and one of only six in the record books (the others were 1781, 1809, 1784, 1969 and 1947). The nearest approaches between 1871 and 1977 had been 1947 with 150.2 mm, 1964 with 158.6 mm, 1922 with 161.5 mm, 1921 with 164.0 mm, 1904 with 165.2 mm, 1879 with 168.0 mm, 1884 with 169.2 mm and 1908 with 173.8 mm. The autumns of 1784, 1788, 1805 and 1817 were all drier than 1947, but it would be tough without charts and reports to document them well! It might be said here of the thirty driest autumns, 1784, 1788, 1854, 1879, 1941, 1955, 1978 and 1985 were followed by cold winters (though 1955 and 1985 were interrupted), whilst 1919, 1920, 1922, 1947 and 1956 were followed by distinctly mild winters. Gavin, if you are capable of long projects, the winter of 1916/1917 would have to be the next one. Although it had no subzero CET, it came after a remarkable run of relatively mild winters (nothing near record-breaking warm, though), with no CET under 2 degrees Celsius having occurred between March 1902 and November 1916. Not only did all three winter months average under 2 degrees Celsius (36 Fahrenheit), but March and April 1917 were relatively speaking even colder: the second-coldest and coldest of the twentieth century respectively. Daily subzero CETs and heavy snow occurred as late as early April 1917, and the winter did not break up until mid-April. It's in fact thought that the winter of 1916/1917, by virtue of being prolonged into normal breeding seasons, was more destructive to wildlife than the of 1947 or 1963.
Also have you noticed that the latest cam studio desyncs the video and the audio. I only noticed because I did a mammoth 45 minute video where it was quite noticeable towards the end, but you can see it a little bit in yours towards the end too. It might not matter to you as it did to me (I needed to use the cursor alot), but if you want to fix it, you can run it through windows movie maker and speed up the video by 1.008x, thatl sync it to within about 1 second per 20 hours (when on the vid setting of setting a key frame every 31 frames). Although if your version is different I can't promise the sync factor will be the same.
Hi Quantum. I'm not running the latest version I don't think. I have been using my version of CamStudio since January 2012. The sync issue's have been getting more of a problem over the past six months. I think the main issue is really just that my PC is getting old and slowing down, cause it seems to coincide with my PC generally slowing down. Really need a new PC, but I'm putting it off and putting it off because I have loads of software that I'm going to have to re-install on new machine, LOL! Will have to get on with it before the end of the year, I think. Will take me a few weeks to transition over to new PC so I better get on with it soon.
GavsWeatherVids I had to upgrade I think because of a new PC, so bear that in mind if you do get a new computer you won't be able to get the old version. Uncorrected the sync is pretty significant, I had 25 seconds per hour which is pretty huge in a 30 minute video. Running every video I make now (if I can be bothered) through windows movie maker is a pain, but it has to be done :/
***** Thanks Q. Yeah, I'll need the new version of CamStudio + the Ava-Cam application. Probably a new webcam. And then there's all the different programme's I use for my website like Kompozzer and Filezilla. Not to mention multiple different web-browsers (you have to make sure your website works across all browsers and media) Is going to be a wrench, but I'll have to start thinking about it soon, as my old PC is slowing down alarmingly (well I have had it since 2008, so it's done well)
I remember that winter very much.My sister was born on the 10th of February that year in 1979.The snow that fell on that day was unreal it was one bitterly cold and Snowy winter
I remember Bonfire Night of 1978. Very mild and foggy night...the smell of smoke in the air the next morning was really strong as there was still a lot of mist and low cloud. Never forgotten it.
Watching this during the hot summer of 2018 to feel cooler!
remember the feb of 79 on the north east coast in amble could not get to school in alnwick for a few days think it started overnight thursday into frinday had a foot of snow on the friday morning . then another snow storm on the sunday night. on the monday you could not see the top of the fence along the riverbank between amble and warkworth. if i remember right had snow on the ground for nearly 2 weeks.
Great video Gav :), the winter of 1978/79 is my only memory, in 50 yrs, of a truly cold and severe winter. The snow drifted to 4ft deep against our north fence in Essex, the local tidal river froze over with ice 6 inches thick.
I remember the Winter of 1978/9 - it was fantastic.
Really enjoyed watching this video.
A few questions...
Why are the low pressures marked with a 'T'?
And, what do the shaded colours represent? It seems that it can be cold when the colours over the UK are shaded yellow.
My memory of January around the 30th, was very snowy. Very heavy prolonged snowfall - we had moved house and this would have been on the 29th or 30th of January. I recall really heavy, deep snow the day after we moved. Schools were closed and it was a real winter wonderland.
But, the chart for that period seems my memory is telling fibs.
We were living in the north Midlands, just south of Sheffield.
Excellent archive Gav ,i remember this winter very well ,i was working for british gas as a service engineer at the time ,very busy trying to keep all the customers warm in country areas ,shovel in the van and snow chains..lol..
I remember this winter although I was only 16/17 years old.
It started with a cold and wet summer of 1978 with continuous rain well into Nov. of 1978.
In December, the weather changed into colder and drier weather which became more severe in January 1979.
This extremely cold winter continued well into the spring of 1979 and the summer of that year was unusually cold. Also, the fall of 1979 was cold and the beginning of the winter that year was colder than normal.
The year of of 1979 was the coldest year of the 20th century here in Iceland. All months of 1979 had temp below normal except February and December.
Then, suddenly in December 1979, the weather changed and the weather of 1980 was back to normal.
It started at old years eve with a lot of snow.I remember it also very well .
I remember that winter, walking to school on my own with snow drifts taller than me. I think only about 8 people were in the class that day. Quite an adventure for a 9 year old. Can't imagine that happening these days.
Good stuff. :)
I rember two major snow events, alas can't remember the years. In torbay then growing up, snow was only on dartmoor, used to be so frustrating seeing the glorious white snow in the distance. Now at 53 I still want to watch it fall in silince, then roll around in it, guess I'll always have love for it. Thank you for sharing your memories
You weren't alone, Jimmy Saville was right behind you, wearing his winter camouflage.
@@rocketscience4516 It's not rocket science is it...
@@lilacfloyd Please work on your attempts to be witty. Much more effort required.
@@rocketscience4516 Y tu. ;)
We didn't suffer alone this winter. Across the U.S.A. the winter of 1978/1979 was brutally cold. January, 1979 is the coldest January on record for America as a whole. I reccomend you view the Northern Hemisphere charts on Wetterzentrale to see the depth of brutal cold that swept across the country at times. Also I reccomend looking at the chart for 10th of January, 1982. I actually went "wow"when I saw it. -40 upper air temperatures! Can you imagine a northerly that potent in this country? Great videos.
The 10th January, 1982, recorded the lowest ever UK temperature of minus 27. 2 degrees Celsius in Scotland. I remember, where I lived in England, the temperature fell to minus 26.1c on the 11 January, 1982 - still the lowest temperature ever recorded for England.
we had snow showers here in birmingham on the first bank holiday monday in may.
Beautiful 😍
Love this Gavs , It started with rain and later on freezing rain ,0 degrees in the north
and in the south 10 degrees , when arrived in the middle ( were I live ) the cold arrived with a lot of thunder
and very dark sky ........................ the next day , they were ice skating , on the roads .............
the whole winter , was lots of snow , and lots of winter storms , still in may , very cold day times 6 degrees
in the end there was 60 cm of ice in the ( sloten) Locks , still not a very severe winter , just a severe winter !
It occurs to me that if there had been some cold air already established during December (like Feb '47) it could of been one of the snowiest months ever, with those fronts constantly stalling. So while 1979 was impressive, it had even greater potential imo.
I remember that one well I that was my first winter at work I also cycled to work it was tricky with the ice and snow been out in some cold weather since then also recall winter 1969 1970 71/72 Not so much snow but bitter winds also 2009 to 2012 snow and cold winds never done me no harm.
We moved into our new house then. Though the house was big, we hadn't put in the central heating yet so it was freezing. My uncle was visiting from Ghana so that was a shock to the system for him. Seem to remember it being cold in January 1980 too, and my grandmother who had never left her village in Ghana saw snow for the first time. Poor nan thought it was some sort of curse🙄
I remember this winter as it was my first winter working as a postie near Glasgow. The temperature went as low a -24C during the night and -11C during the day. Metal gates were frozen shut as were letterboxes with the heat inside causing condensation which froze on the letterbox making it near impossible to post the mail. Multiply that by almost 600 twice a day and you can see what we were up against. Frozen moustache and eyelashes for what seemed like weeks left me wondering why I left my job as a baker!
I remember this clearly Oct 78 I was 21 very unusual weather 25 degrees 😀😀
Yes October/Autumn 1987 was very mild and dry until the last days of November.
And, back then, it wasn't attributed to global warming, like it would nowadays.
Great Video, Thank's Gavin :-)
Great Video!!
Thanks. :)
I remember that weather in SW England, the snow started New Years Eve 1978. The snow was several feet deep. On a few days, and I remember reading the weather reports in a national newspaper, Torquay was actually the warmest place in the UK mid week, rising to 0 deg C. It lasted just one week, then mild air came back in from the SW, I remember that too, it rose to 10 deg C in a few hours. The snow didn't last long.
The spring of 1979 was the third wettest in the EWP series, and the wettest since 1818. For this reason, I had thought upon looking it would be worth its own series to look at the cool, wet weather (though 48 springs since 1766 have been cooler).
In May 1979, in fact, the number of abandoned county cricket matches was the highest on record, more than in the comparably wet Mays of 1886, 1932 and 1967. I wonder if this relates to the chilly winter beforehand - a trait that may have been shared by the winter and spring of 1885/1886 when washouts were seen on a significant scale for the first time in county cricket history. In 1932, by contrast, January was very mild (not to the same record-breaking levels as in the eastern US - where the Lake Placid Olympics was severely affected - and North China) and February so dry as to reduce soil moisture problems from the cool, wet April and May even with uncovered pitches.
i remeber the blizzard very well it was new years eve 1978, the next day we woke up to at least 7 inches of snow, it was the first time i had really seen snow like this , i wnt for a walk up to the top of my hill and walked into drifts that were at least 4 feet deep, for the next week we went sledging at my local park, we had 6 days of unbroken sunshine, i see in you charts that there doesnt seem to be much in the way of high pressure ?
Pleased you enjoyed it Andre. :)
I always thought I was an xmas baby (born sept 79) but clearly I was a blizard baby lol
I’ve seen another historic video on this particular Winter elsewhere. So I came to look for Gav’s, as I didn’t recall watching this before . I recall a few bad winters at this time. But this was easily the worst. I was 6/7. It created the Winter of Discontent. Are there any parallels with this winter? I mean a Mild Autumn etc. Followed by a huge winter!
I forgot when I first commented here to note that, in fact, the autumn of 1978 was the driest on record in the 250-year (as of 2015) EWP series, with only 128.6 millimetres of precipitation. October 1978 was especially dry, being the last October to date with under 25.4 millimetres and one of only six in the record books (the others were 1781, 1809, 1784, 1969 and 1947).
The nearest approaches between 1871 and 1977 had been 1947 with 150.2 mm, 1964 with 158.6 mm, 1922 with 161.5 mm, 1921 with 164.0 mm, 1904 with 165.2 mm, 1879 with 168.0 mm, 1884 with 169.2 mm and 1908 with 173.8 mm. The autumns of 1784, 1788, 1805 and 1817 were all drier than 1947, but it would be tough without charts and reports to document them well! It might be said here of the thirty driest autumns, 1784, 1788, 1854, 1879, 1941, 1955, 1978 and 1985 were followed by cold winters (though 1955 and 1985 were interrupted), whilst 1919, 1920, 1922, 1947 and 1956 were followed by distinctly mild winters.
Gavin, if you are capable of long projects, the winter of 1916/1917 would have to be the next one. Although it had no subzero CET, it came after a remarkable run of relatively mild winters (nothing near record-breaking warm, though), with no CET under 2 degrees Celsius having occurred between March 1902 and November 1916. Not only did all three winter months average under 2 degrees Celsius (36 Fahrenheit), but March and April 1917 were relatively speaking even colder: the second-coldest and coldest of the twentieth century respectively. Daily subzero CETs and heavy snow occurred as late as early April 1917, and the winter did not break up until mid-April. It's in fact thought that the winter of 1916/1917, by virtue of being prolonged into normal breeding seasons, was more destructive to wildlife than the of 1947 or 1963.
Hope next week we get blizzard, it's unlikely but just hope
Also have you noticed that the latest cam studio desyncs the video and the audio. I only noticed because I did a mammoth 45 minute video where it was quite noticeable towards the end, but you can see it a little bit in yours towards the end too. It might not matter to you as it did to me (I needed to use the cursor alot), but if you want to fix it, you can run it through windows movie maker and speed up the video by 1.008x, thatl sync it to within about 1 second per 20 hours (when on the vid setting of setting a key frame every 31 frames). Although if your version is different I can't promise the sync factor will be the same.
Hi Quantum. I'm not running the latest version I don't think. I have been using my version of CamStudio since January 2012.
The sync issue's have been getting more of a problem over the past six months. I think the main issue is really just that my PC is getting old and slowing down, cause it seems to coincide with my PC generally slowing down. Really need a new PC, but I'm putting it off and putting it off because I have loads of software that I'm going to have to re-install on new machine, LOL! Will have to get on with it before the end of the year, I think. Will take me a few weeks to transition over to new PC so I better get on with it soon.
GavsWeatherVids I had to upgrade I think because of a new PC, so bear that in mind if you do get a new computer you won't be able to get the old version. Uncorrected the sync is pretty significant, I had 25 seconds per hour which is pretty huge in a 30 minute video. Running every video I make now (if I can be bothered) through windows movie maker is a pain, but it has to be done :/
***** Thanks Q. Yeah, I'll need the new version of CamStudio + the Ava-Cam application. Probably a new webcam. And then there's all the different programme's I use for my website like Kompozzer and Filezilla. Not to mention multiple different web-browsers (you have to make sure your website works across all browsers and media)
Is going to be a wrench, but I'll have to start thinking about it soon, as my old PC is slowing down alarmingly (well I have had it since 2008, so it's done well)
What caused this unusually cold winter???
Not sure. It was a very long time ago.
I was born on September 20th 1978
I hope this winter will be cold
You are so much younger
Well it was 8 years ago. Time doesn't wait for any of us lol!
Was January 2010 severe