On Tue, 6 Jan 2015 11:08:11 +0000
John Hall wrote:

Though some notable winters (notably 1947) haven't begun till
considerably later than this. And looking at that winter's charts for
the first couple of weeks of January seemed to give no hint of what
was to come.

But December and January were both cold, about 1-1.5C below average.
December CET was 3.0C below 2014. As for minimum temperatures, December
1946 was 19= coldest in the full CET record, whilst Jan '47 was 25=.
So 1946-7 was already a cold winter well before the February snowfall
occurred. The frosty December and January would have gotten into the
ground and, like the build-up to the 1962-3 winter, would have aided
the persistence of the lying snow.

--
Graham P Davis, Bracknell, Berks.
[Retired meteorologist and computer programmer]
Posted with Claws: http://www.claws-mail.org/