Worst weather you remember

Not the worst, but the most memorable weather in my region.

The golden Summer of 2006, when we had the football World Cup in Germany. It was months after months of sunshine and awesome weather. Sadly we had some kind of military exercise that time and the weather was going crazy. 30+ degrees Celcius at day which is kind of a bummer when you are marching, digging trenches and doing guard duty. And at night it went well below zero. I remember my canteen freezing and everyone shivering their butts off in their tents as no-one thought of bringing cold gear in the middle of August. So thats that...

Then in 2015 we had frozen rain in the city i now live in. Nothig could have prepared us for that. We just woke up one morning in March and i had been raining heavily in the after a long cold spell. Everything, and I repeat EVERYTHING was buried beneath a thick layer of clear ice. Grass, trees, vehicles and every surface you could walk on was frozen in a block of ice. You couldn't take a single step anywhere withoug slipping and falling. Cars wouldnt move because they were frozen in place and the doors couldn't be opened anyway because the handles were encased in ice. The whole life was frozen for three days before the weather got warm enough and the city came through to the side streets.
I even remember some guys from work who wouldnt believe me. They insisted to deliver some goods because "it can't be that bad". Ended up in a ditch and had to abbandon their truck for a few days because no rescuers were able to get there earlier.

 

I remember one year in the 70s it snowed on the 4th of June, in Fife. We got about 3" of snow. The guy next door had put two greenhouses full of plants out on the drying green to harden off, before going off to work. They certainly did!
If it had been a couple of trays I would have rescued them, but not a whole stack I couldn't.
By tea time the snow had completely disappeared.

 

I've read stories about the great London fog/smog. Almost didn't believe them until New Year's in 2012.
I was a student at university in Stuttgart and we had a nice party with some friends. Went home at around 3 AM and were hit by fog so thick we couldn't see a single thing. Everything further away than hands reach might as well not have existed at all.
Drove home on the Autobahn at walking speed because we could neither see the lines on the ground, nor any kind of signs, other cars or the side of the road. Had to turn on our GPS navigation to even know where we are. One of the guys had to lean out the window to tell us when the the curb would end indicating there was another street crossing.
Found my own home only after hugging the houses and watching the signs on the mail boxes.
If I had been drinking too, I probably would've died that night by freezing in a field after getting lost...

 

I remember the start. There was a frost, or very close to it, at the beginning of June! Then the following week the heat started....wonderful summer I probably wouldn't have thought so if I'd been gardening then.

 

More recently, the winter of 2010/11 was dreadful here. A wave of arctic weather came down from northern continental europe, causing temps of -12C during the day and -17C at night. Plus a metre of snow that lasted for 10 days. Thankfully the snow provided an insulating layer over the garden and there were surprisingly few losses.

 

Ah, this reminds me of driving through Germany going to Oldenburg one Christmas in the early 80s and the snow was deep and the fog thick creeping along and when we could see we were driving the wrong way on the Autobahn!

To make matters worse, we were delivering a brand new Renault to her and the heater didn't work!. We had with us a sack of used clothes to give to my sister as she sent things to Romania. When we arrived in the wee hours of the morning, my sister had gone to bed thinking we had stopped along the way so had to shout through the letterbox. She laughed at us as we had three layers of clothes on ... we did stop ... to put on the clothes in the bag. She gave us soup but we didn't know whether to eat it or put our feet in it.

 

The Beast from the East in 2018 was a bit of a pig.

 

I remember seeing the River Thames estuary at Southend frozen over in 1963 and snow continuing for weeks.

1987 was the year of the hurricane and many trees were brought down in my area and the south/east of England. My neighbours lost a chimney stack and we were without power for days.

Another hurricane hit the Isle of Man while I was living there. I can't remember the year but it was sometime in the 90's. It tore up hundreds of trees and created a lot of damage to buildings and power lines.

An unusual occurrence (because the climate is quite mild) and much later in March 2013, the big snow that hit the island fell mostly on high ground and the west coast, cutting off the village I lived in, which had to be dug out. The power was off for almost a week. The snow fell heavily for one night. Around 3ooo sheep died and farmers asked for volunteers to help find and dig those out of the snow that were buried. It was a good five to six weeks before the snow thawed completely.

What I woke too.




A road leading to my home.


The village after digger clearance.


The main road leading out of the village. In places there were drifts of 20ft and amongst the snow in this image was an almost buried police vehicle.


The famous Creg-Ny-Baa pub on the lower part of the T.T. course.