Just as it felt like spring had arrived, a raw wind is blowing, with snow on some high ground and gloomy skies over many areas.
The cold snap has come from a large block of high pressure centred over Scandinavia, sweeping cold air down from Russia and eastern Europe. Temperatures have dropped after a decent run of mild weather — in central England they were 1.6C above average up to March 11.
Far worse has happened in the past, though. Two years ago saw the coldest March for 51 years, and the temperature averaged just 2.2C (36F), with minus 12.9C (8.8F) recorded in the Highlands on March 11. The second half of the month was particularly cold, when temperatures would usually be expected to be rising. Blizzards brought big snow drifts to many places and especially in southern coastal areas of England. Drivers were trapped at night on roads in Sussex and Kent, there were several hundred collisions on the roads, schools were closed, and flights were badly disrupted at Gatwick. Eurostar services also ground to a halt, and conditions were exceptionally severe in the Channel Islands where strong winds whipped up big snowdrifts and the early crop of Jersey Royal potatoes was devastated.
But conditions have been even worse than that. On this day on March 14, 1958, the lowest March temperature in the UK was recorded: minus 23C (-9F) at Logie Coldstone, Aberdeenshire. Arctic air brought blizzards and heavy snowfalls, and the northeast was hit particularly hard, with drifts reported up to 10ft high in the Middlesbrough area, and villages in North Yorkshire were left stranded in deep snow. Southern parts of the UK were not immune from the conditions — snow showers spread to the south coast and down to the Channel Islands. “Up to 15in of snow fell in Alderney, which has been virtually deprived of milk because aircraft are unable to land there,” reported The Times. And the cold carried on in to early April with the coldest Easter on record.