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By
Peter Cockroft, BBC London Meteorologist
The first four inches of snow arrived on Boxing Day as Brenda Lee
was "Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree" on the wireless.
Then on the night of December 29 bitter Siberian easterly winds
delivered another 10 inches of drifting powdery snow.
Staff at the London Weather Centre measured the snow as they struggled
into work.
In Chelsea the level snow was seven inches deep with drifts of two
feet.
Out at Gravesend 14 inches of snow lay on the ground with the drifts
reaching six feet.
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| Peter
Cockroft |
New
Year's Eve was one of the quietest anyone could remember with few
Londoners wanting to brave the freezing weather and temperatures
remained close to or below zero till March.
Despite
some minor thawing, the white blanket covered London for the next
two months.
In fact, in mid January Arctic winds brought another four inches
of snow then in early February the Siberian cold returned with yet
another four inches of the white stuff!
How
deep was the snow in London? Look at our graphic
Road
and rail transport was severely disrupted, the airports closed and
the Thames froze over.
The Navy managed to keep Chatham dockyard open by using an icebreaker
but the other London docks remained closed with ice floes and mini
icebergs on the river.
The knock on effect was around a 30% increase in the price of fresh
foods and millions of milk bottles disappeared.
snowy,
but sunny
To add to the misery power cuts became the norm, refuse remained
uncollected and people had to get water from road tankers as the
mains supply froze as well.
Sport
was a major victim with the FA Cup draw becoming a farce . . . "the
winners of A or B will play the winners of C or D" etc. etc.
How
cold was it? See our graphic
Chelsea got so fed up they flew off to Malta to play a friendly
and ended up staying for a week.
The weather didn't do them any favours. They'd been on a roll up
to the big freeze then once the season got going again they went
on a loosing streak.
Mind you they did get promoted to the old First Division (now the
Premiership) in the end, but it all hung on the final match.
It
wasn't all bad news. Although bitterly cold, January and February
were exceptionally sunny.
Along with the more usual winter pastimes of tobogganing and snowman
building the plucky Brits invented some new ones.
What was the wind like? See our graphic
The Thames saw its first car rally on the ice and instead of water
skiing some one had the bright idea of towing skiers across the
ice behind a car!
Then
in March the thaw set in. The ice and snow melted away. The dairies
got their milk bottles back and Cliff Richard tried to cheer everyone
up with thoughts of a "Summer Holiday".
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