The Winter of 1962-63

Smog

London is famous for its smogs. Our house, like most London homes, was heated by burning coal in the fire place. Burning the coal produced a lot of smoke and a lot of sulphur dioxide. After the worst ever smog of 1952, regulations were introduced to encourage the use of 'smokeless' fuels. However, people were given time to change over and by 1962, a lot of smokey coal was still being burnt. We still burnt smokey coal.

1962 was the last great smog. It lasted from December 4 to December 7. An anticyclone sat over southern England causing an inversion combined with light winds, thus creating a pool of stagnant air and thick fog. It was cold too, the temperature not getting above freezing for the four days. So people were burning more coal than usual. The smoke from the coal combined with the fog to produce the smog.

I was 9 at the time and attending Hook Lane Junior School in Welling, Kent. I lived on Hook Lane, 250 m from the school, and walked to school and back each day. School didn't close for the smog and the buses kept running. The only real memory I have of the time was walking along beside a London bus that was travelling along Hook Lane. The conductor was walking along the kerb, holding his right hand out towards the bus. The driver, who couldn't see the kerb very well, could see the conductor's hand, and so could still proceed along the road. Of course, travelling by bus was slower than walking, but it was more comfortable. There was no other traffic on the roads, so running into another moving vehicle wasn't really a problem

The combination of smoke and sulphur dioxide caused serious respiratory problems. Sources vary as to the number of deaths in London these caused, with most figures being between a few hundred and a few thousand.

Snow

The smog cleared on December 7 and a few days of relatively mild weather followed before snow on December 12-13. I don't remeber that snowfall. But I do remember that we moved house on December 14 from Welling to Brentwood in Essex. We moved into a new-build with no garden, no carpet etc.

The weather was mild with quite a bit of sunshine until 22nd. Then an anticyclone got established over Scandinavia, driving strong cold easterly winds across Britain. The ground was frosty day and night, though there was no snow and it was mostly sunny.

Things changed on boxing day and a few centimetres of snow fell. It stayed there until December 29, when a blizzard dumped another 25 centimetres. This was an average figure, as strong easterly winds caused the snow to form quite large drifts in places more sheltered by the wind. About 100 m along our road was a farm with a hedge against the footpath. The snow drift against the hedge was as tall as the hedge.

From boxing day until January 8, there was negligible sunshine, though no more snow to speak of. After Jan 8, sunny days were a lot more common, though the temperatures stayed below freezing and there was very little melting of the snow.

School resumed after the Christmas holidays on about January 13. Being sick (as I usually was in those days), I didn't start school until about a week later. There was a thermometer on the windowsill outside the headmaster's office and I looked at it every morning when I arrived. It seemed to always say -7 degrees.

The playground had a long stretch of very smooth ice, which I and many other kids had fun with, taking a run-up and seeing how far we could slide.

A downside of the cold weather was the school milk. Each morning we were made to drink a third of a pint of milk. Because it was delivered during the night, by the time the teachers got to school, it was pretty much frozen. So they sat it inside the classroom by the windows in the sun. The classroom was quite warm, so, by morning break the milk was quite warm and starting to go off. I really disliked milk at the best of times, but this was disgusting. I would take a mouthful, then spend a while trying to stop myself from throwing up. Getting through my third of a pint would take me about 10 minutes, but I wasn't allowed to go out and play until I'd drunk it.

My brother, John, the boy next door, Geoff, and I used to have fun in the snow after school. One day, we decided to dig down through the deepest part of the snowdrift by the farm hedge to see what was down there. Of course, in retrospect, one should only expect the ground, but we were adventurous and optimistic. We dug a hole almost as deep as we were tall and, at the bottom, discovered - a bag of rotten apples. What a find!

Our local shops were about a kilometre away down Crow Green Road. The road didn't have a formal footpath, but a foot-trodden track developed through the snow which was easy to follow. I remember that one of the houses down Crow Green Road had an igloo in the yard. From memory, it would have been big enough to accommodate a decent-sized family. But then I was smaller then and other things seemed bigger.

Snow in Lancashire, January 1963

Dragging On

I loved the snow and the cold and my excitement persisted throughout January. By February, however, I was starting to look forward to seeing some green grass. February was slightly warmer than January, with the temperature getting above freezing on a few days. The snow would get thinner and some green would appear, but then it would snow again and cover it all up. It wasn't until nearly the end of February that melting happened in any serious way, and the drifts persisted until about March 6.

I didn't keep temperature records in those days (I was only 9), but I did find records for Reading which showed the temperature not getting above 5 degrees from December 22 to February 26. In Brentwood, being further east and higher in elevation, the highest temperature might have been more like 2 degrees.

The lowest temperature at Reading was -12.6, though Southend, not far from Brentwood, according to one source, recorded an overnight minimum of -23. I remember pictures on TV of the sea off East Anglia and Kent, frozen as far as the eye could see.

Every night, we would have leafy ice crystals covering the insides of our bedroom windows. If the sun shone on them during the day, they would melt, but on cooler, cloudy days they would persist from one night to the next.