Frozen in time

Every year at about this time it was the custom of this newspaper and others to put in a call to Bill Foggitt. Fewer than five weeks left to the big day, and folk start to get curious: are we likely to enjoy a white Christmas? And Britain's most famous weather folklorist was the man to ask.

Bill, who lived in Thirsk, would have given the question serious thought. Having studied the hedgerows and the behaviour of wildlife, he would offer us a long-range forecast.

Those years when he said there was a good chance of a snowy holiday everyone's inner child tingled with anticipation.

This year there is no Bill to give us a prediction. He died in September, aged 91.

There is, however, a chance to enjoy his wisdom again with the reissue of a book Bill wrote with Len Markham, The Yorkshire Weather Book. First published in 1993, the fact-packed paperback has been reissued by Countryside Books in response to requests from the public.

It crams a millennium or so's gales, storms, floods and heatwaves into 126 pages, with an introduction by Bill himself.

This reveals how he first began his weather diaries. "On 29th June 1927, father, mother, my younger brother and sister and I sat on a crowded hillside in Wensleydale around the hour of 6am waiting to see that rare phenomenon, a total eclipse of the sun," Bill wrote.

"'This won't happen again until August 1999,' said father, 'so someone ought to take notes.' As the eldest of the family, 14 years of age, the 'lot' fell on me, and on that day I began a weather diary which I have kept up to the present time."

He was following in the footsteps of his great-grandfather, Thomas, who was told by his own grandparents of a great cloudburst in November 1771 which swept away a large part of Yarm with the loss of 30 lives.

"It was accounts of this disaster which set great-grandfather keeping weather records day by day in the hope that he would eventually be able to predict on-coming catastrophes."

Neither amateur nor professional meteorologist is yet able to do that. But while we may never know what storm is brewing around the corner, we can all enjoy the weather in retrospect.

The book takes a chronological approach, dipping into the record books to chronicle freak events through the centuries.

In 1165, for instance, a monk wrote of seeing the Devil in the form of a black horse galloping across a Scarborough hillside. Historians have speculated that what the churchman actually witnessed was a tornado.

In 1740 during an intense frost, birds fell to the ground frozen in flight and rock-hard bread was inedible. Printing presses were set up on the solid Ouse to publish a commemoration of the harsh conditions.

Several pages are devoted to the winter when Yorkshire became an honorary outpost of the Arctic: 1947.

"Domestic conditions were grim and cheerless," Bill and Len wrote. "Coal, gas and even candles were in short supply and many a home fire was kept burning with broken furniture and timber gathered from the hedgerows. There were frequent power cuts and only limited supplies of bread and other basic foodstuffs.

"Responding to Prime Minister Clement Attlee's radio appeal to economise, people ate less. They went to bed early and shared baths and, as they had dug for victory in the war years, in 1947 they dug for survival, shovels and spades on the front step ever ready to do battle with the daily onslaughts of snow."

Some readers will remember those days with a shiver - and the floods that followed. Still more will recall the last big freeze, in 1963. And if you do, we need your help.

Photos and memories of the tough winter of '63 are being sought for an exhibition on the ice age in York.

The exhibition at the Yorkshire Museum will run from May 28 until December 31, 2005, and will take visitors on a journey through the last two million years - the period of the great ice age - looking at the climate's effect on life on earth and the landscape around us.

It will highlight the fact that we are still living in the great ice age, which has included periods of both hot and cold weather, and will examine the two most recent big freezes in 1947 and 1963.

Martin Lunn, curator of astronomy for York Museums Trust, is putting together this section of the exhibition and has found many images of the 1947 winter, but very few of the 1963 cold spell which particularly affected the north of England.

He said: "The temperatures dropped on Boxing Day 1962 and the freeze lasted until March 1963. Although 1947 had more snow, 1963 was the coldest winter since 1740 and the coldest temperatures reached -20C.

"In York the River Ouse was frozen over and the ice was four to five inches thick - there are reports of people playing football under Lendal Bridge. But there were chronic shortages of coal and fresh food and frequent power cuts during this period."

Martin is looking for photographs and memories which would bring alive the conditions during this period.

"The years 1947 and 1963 are the only examples we've got in living memory of what it is like to experience really cold weather. During the cold periods of the ice age, this was permanent and was what people would have had to be able to survive through.

"They're also the conditions we can expect within the next 20 years according to some scientists, who have predicted that the Atlantic conveyor, or the gulf stream, which warms our shores will turn off because the ice is melting in Greenland."

If you can help with photos or memories of the winter of 1963, please send them to Martin Lunn, Curator of astronomy, Yorkshire Museum, Museum Gardens, York, YO1 1FR, or email martin.lunn@ymt.org.uk

The Yorkshire Weather Book by Bill Foggitt and Len Markham is published by Countryside Books, price £7.95

Updated: 09:10 Monday, November 22, 2004