March is proving to be very chilly, and winter is returning to Scotland with heavy snow showers. It is beginning to look as though March could end up colder than February, in what has been a topsy-turvy weather pattern ever since winter began.
Perhaps the nearest match to this strange weather was 120 years ago.
The winter of 1890-91 also began ferociously cold in late November and lasted all through December, although conditions thawed out in a balmy February. And just when it seemed that the worst of the winter was over, on March 9 a full-scale blizzard swamped southern Britain for four days.
It was one of the worst blizzards recorded in Britain. The West Country was worst hit, where snowdrifts piled up to 6m (20ft) high, burying houses so deep that many people had to climb out of first-floor windows to get out. The howling winds swept snow up so high that it even muffled the bells in church spires, and one extraordinary snowdrift estimated at about 30m (90ft) deep filled a ravine at Tavy Cleave on Dartmoor. “No such storm had visited the West of England within remembrance,” The Times reported. In Devon alone, 14 trains were buried for days in monstrous drifts and passengers and crew had to be dug out. Several people froze to death outdoors and thousands of livestock perished.
Hurricane-force winds blew down more than half a million trees and roofs were ripped off houses. But the worst casualties were at sea, with 65 ships wrecked in the Channel. As The Times reported on March 14: “Coastlines were strewn with the wreckage of boats and ships along the Southwest coast, Dover, Folkestone, Hastings and Dungeness . . . boats had sails torn to shreds.” Some 220 lives were lost at sea in one of the worst maritime disasters of the century.
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The rest of that spring remained desperately cold, with repeated onslaughts of snow; some snowdrifts on Dartmoor remained visible until June. We can only hope that climate history doesn’t repeat itself this year.