Freak Frost of 1978


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Can anyone remember the winter of 78 there was a very unusual frost? High Humidity combined with low temperatures.

Ice built up on all the overhead telephone wires till there was a cylinder of ice along the wires.

We woke up to a beautiful sunny morning, but all the telephones were out.

Either the wires were broken or the poles bent or broke.

Everything else was coverd in sugar like ice, Trees Cars everything

Telephone engineers from as far away as Ireland were brought in to repair the damage.

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Nope I don't remember that Mick,I would have been living in Balloon Wood flats at that time,but remember nothing of it at all.

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I don't remember it in 78 but I do remember one hell of a bad snow fall in early 1994 on a Friday night ,that was on a similar line, as it was totally out of the blue not cold or any thing it just suddenly froze and then snowed on what were wet surfaces (I had to go up Cavendish road knocking the snow off of the telephone lines with my mums clothes prop so the buses could through) there was a sort of earie silence as there was no traffic and the crispness of the snow under foot silenced heavy foot steps.

I had to walk over to my (ex) girlfreinds house in Sneinton (Do you rember Lorna Mick) to check up on her, as I couldn't get through on the phone, and driving proved impossible.(only to find out when I got there she had got a taxi and taken her kids to her mums house.)

It had melted by Saturday teatime and if you drive up Cavendish road the metal telegraph pole opposite mums house is still bent from the weight

Inccidently the metal telegraph pole opposite my mums was the first one in the U.K. I remember my dad being slightly miffed as the British Telecom engineers woke him up to tell him the delightful news (He was off sick at the time and he must have been sick cos he was the type who would try to walk off a broken leg )

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Winter of 78/9 was the worst since 1947 Mick, I was living in North Yorks at the time, my last Xmas in the UK. I went down to spend it with my parents who lived in St Anns Estate. BR was hard put running trains, points were frozen and the propane heaters just weren't any competition for the very cold humid conditions.

The whole of the south east electrified train system was down due to the pickups burning up on the locos, trains were pulled out of mothballs to keep the rail system up and running. Several BR track crew were killed that winter too.

Everything was covered in a Hoar frost.

My central heating, elec storage, couldn't keep up with the frigid day temps either!!

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I am sure it was Christmas 78 when we had days and days of freezing fog. My mum and dad drove down to spend Christmas with us. It was so bad they did not park their car on the road in case anyone drove or slid into it. I got dad to park it on the lawn next to mine as the ground was frozen solid. We had a great Christmas, staying in, keeping warm and cooking nice things. Happy memories!

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There was also a bad winter storm in the late 1980s, which seemed to be local to the north of the county.

I was living in Rainworth at the time, snow blocked the roads and ice brought down power lines. We had three or four days with no power, and no chance of getting off our hilly road. Without power, the gas central heating wouldn't work, and as mains water to the estate was pumped, we had no water either. Luckily, we had a coal fire, so I melted snow in a pan and boiled it to make tea or heated tins of soup.

When power was finally restored, and water coming through the pipes, it took ages to refill the tank - probably due to all the toilets on the estate being flushed at the same time!

I'm just glad I was of a generation where we could cope in such circumstances.

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In December 1990 there was a big snow storm. It happened on a Saturday and my husband had gone into work to complete a job. The snow got so bad he left his car at work and walked home: 11 miles. We thought the car would be OK as it was parked inside a building, locked and with the alarm on and there was a security man on duty. At home the electricity went off, then our burglar alarm went off and kept on going until the backup battery ran down. A wrapped a towel around the box do cut down the sound and I taped it to the wall. Later I discovered I had wrecked the wallpaper. On the Sunday we got a phone call from the factory security person to say that the snow was so heavy that the roof of the building used as a car park had collapsed and crushed 3 cars. Ours was one of them. Thankfully nobody was in the building when this happened. Our car was 4 months old. It was replaced. This was a bad weekend and everything seemed dreadful at the time but all the things that went wrong got fixed. Nobody was hurt and that is the most important thing.

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