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A Country Year - Weather-breeders.

January 19th to February 5th

From the Book of Seasons by William Howitt (1836) - Mild and even sunny days sometimes break the sullen monotony of January, which the country people look upon less with a pleased than a foreboding eye, denominating them weather-breeders. Whilst they are present, however, whatever consequences they may be chargeable with, they are extremely grateful. Gnats will even to be seen to issue from their secret dormitories to dance in the long withheld rays of the sun. I have seen the leaves of the primrose shooting up vigorously beneath the warm hedges at such times; and moles, feeling the ground released from its frosty bondage, begin to burrow and throw up heaps of fresh and crumbly mould.

It is well that I do not attempt to describe any particular season, but speak of them generally; for it is a subject of universal wonder that our old-fashioned winters are quite gone. With the exception of 1829 and 1830, we have not had a severe winter for many years. For the last twenty years the winters have been progressively getting milder and more open. We have not had those long-continued frosts - deep, lane-filling, hedge-burying snows, which we had formerly. Skates have almost become obsolete; snow balling is quite traditional; and stopping the mails by drifts, a wonderful occurrence. Old Mother Shipton's prophecy, that summer shall only be distinguished from winter by the leaves on the trees, seems fast coming upon us. Many are the speculations of the weather-wise on the causes of this; with one, it is the breaking-up of the ice in the polar regions - with another, the decrease of the American forests - with a third, the increased population and cultivation of Europe - with others, the approach of a comet, though John Evelyn tell us that a comet and the great frost in his time, when the Thames was frozen over and a fair held on it, came together. The fact is the knowing ones are completely thrown out - they cannot tell how it happens; and ere long, we may probably find ourselves, with as little apparent reason, in the midst of old winters again.

From the Norfolk Chonicle (1859) - "What extraordinary weather; how uncommonly mild; so unlike winter!" These are the kind of exclamations which preface many an Englishman's chat in January, 1859. And certainly it has been a month of remarkable weather, at times like April than the depth of winter. The new year opened with a week of dull, muggy, mild weather, then followed a few slight frosts, with bright beautiful days, and since then we have had a succession of cheerful mildness, broken now and then by a wet or windy day. As we are writing, birds are singing and insects playing with all the freshness and vigour of spring, and some of the buds in the gardens and hedgerows seem ready to burst into leaf.

From the Norfolk Chronicle (1863) - It must be nearly twenty years ago since we experienced as mild a winter as the one we are now passing through. If we remember rightly, the January and February of that season were both equally mild, and then followed a cold and wretched March, which ruthlessly cut off and destroyed the too forward vegetation.

This January has been very similar to the last month of the old year, being both wet and windy, as well as remarkably mild. We predicted the great aurora of December was the forerunner of a series of storms, and there has been a constant succession of gales for more than six weeks.

A Country Year - Weather-breeders.

January 19th to February 5th

These winds have sadly ruffled the stacks all over the country, and the thatch has been displaced so many times that the roofs look like untidy lumps of straw than decent and well-built wheat and barley stacks.

From the Norfolk News (1890) - It has said that only once before during the current century has there been recorded so high a temperature for January as during the past month has been registered. Never within my recollection has such a series of furious storms raged as that which occurred towards the close of the month.

A phenomenally mild winter and spring, and consequently a splendid wheat crop, was that of the year 1863; so that there is no reason to be downcast with the mildness of the winter as far as it is gone. The forwardness of the autumn-sown wheat plant is at the present time astonishing.

From the Eastern Daily News (1896) - Of course everyone is talking about the season. Nobody is inclined to believe that anyone is old enough to remember anything like it. A January without snow! Why, it is incredible! I can, however, remember somewhere down in the forties three or four similar years in succession. Here, in the first week in February, aconites, snowdrops, and even crocuses, are in full bloom. Violets and primroses are apparently to be had in abundance. We had, however, better not boast. Severe winters have been known to set in in the early day of February. Even March and April may have storms in store.

From the Diss Express (1898) - The prophets who, before last summer was over, were in a great hurry to make it clear that, because we had had a wave of unusual cold early in September, we had started on a long and severe winter, must have long since repented them of their precipitate conclusion. No sooner had they spread the bad news broadcast than the few days of cold vanished, and although we have reached the period of lengthening days, there is no tendency on the part of the atmosphere to assume a severe, nipping behaviour. The country has passed through one the pleasantest autumns on record, one in which not even a farmer could discover any cause for a small grumble. We are now nearly a month on the springside of the winter solstice, and still the season remains remarkably open, with roses blooming, butterflies roaming about, starlings hatching their eggs, and other evidences of precociousness in Nature.

From the Yarmouth Independent J. S. Horn, N. Walsham (1927) - Again we have favoured with a fine open month. No severe frosty weather, no snow either, unless you include a few flakes on the 22nd, which barely covered the ground before it melted.

Total rainfall was moderate, amounting to 1.90 ins. January is usually a fairly dry month with an average of about 2 ins, but in 1922 we experience a fall of 4.44 ins., whereas in 1906 only 0.63 ins. fell.

Sunday. the 9th, was a beautiful day, with thrushes and other birds singing. The winter heliotrope was in flower on the 7th, also jasmine and primrose, followed by the aconite on the 23rd and snowdrop on 25th. It was interesting to note that honey bees were observed visiting the heliotrope on the 31st and following days.

A Country Year - Weather-breeders.

January 19th to February 5th

From the Yarmouth Independent, Fred Cole (1932) - "I think it will break out soon" - a friend at the door remarked with regard to the hidden sunshine of the morning, a few minutes since. He had been facing the south, where, no doubt, rifts in the cloud expanse were already "sky-pools" of sun-lit azure; while my view had been one of winter-greyness of various degrees.

After writing for those few minutes I am now looking up: and there is already a great chance in my weather prospects. The greyness has now vanished leaving a vault of exquisite blue, streaked with long, broad, feathery, bands of cream-flecked, white cloud.

With this delightful change in the sky, it is not surprising to note that the grey grass at the far end of the meadow view has become suffused with sunshine glow, while another break of sunshine seems to be stealing out from the green undergrowth of Colton Wood, opposite my window. This small flood of sunshine enlarges every moment.

What a contrast there is between the scene before me now, and the view I had of it beneath a star-spangled sky, when I was awakened early this morning by a loud, strong, whistling whoop repeated again, and yet again, of wild swans passing near by.

There was no mistake that they were whoopers, as when one has heard the "honk" of wild geese it would be a strange lapse of memory which could take that for:-

"The whistle strong, the deep drawn whoop.

Which tells to the ear the passing troop."

as I was told in my boyhood, when we regarded the wild swan's whoop as a forecast of severe weather.

The forecast seemed very feasible when the swans were passing by, in that early hour of the morning when the multitude of stars were glimmering frostily, and the landscape beneath them was hoary with ground frost.

We were told in my long ago that January sunshine was not good for green fodder and hay prospects. The old-shepherd-baliff would shake his head ominously in such a glorious January hour as this, repeating, for the benefit of younger folk around, one of his stock adages: -

"When grass blades grow in January,

Spring feed and haysel hopes miscarry."

While the "top-and-tailing" women on the swede ridges would say: - "We shall suffer for this - Sure-lie!"

But why spoil a sunshine day in nursing "old saws" which observation and a notebook can often prove unreliable; even if a flock of gulls did fly over us in a southward direction yesterday afternoon, some hours before the swans came; while a flock of lapwings mingled with rooks on the meadows this morning?

"Who can measure a day by its doings even though nightfall come?" was one of the old shepherd-bailiff's sayings which, to me, was among the cream of his store.

Who can estimate the results of today's work of the myriads of sunbeams pouring down upon the meadows, fields, and woodlands, within my view? Gazing across the fields and meadows in the direction of "Primrose Hill" in the heart of Colton Wood, that moment's thought is not wasted which is given to sunbeams stirring life in the buds which are, even now, swelling on the twigs of the trees, and to those others which are falling into the hearts of those "first flowers of spring" from which the hill has its name.

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