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A Country Year - It Blew And It Snew.

January 1st to January 18th

From the Eastern Daily Press, E. B. Pomeroy (1893) - An old shepherd once said to me, "First it blew, then it snew, then it thew, and then it turned round and friz." 

 

From the Thetford & Watton Times (1881) - The wintery weather, which has suddenly fallen upon us, reached its climax on Tuesday, when there was a strong gale from the east, mingled with snow seldom experienced in England. It resembled white dust, and was blown in sheets as fine as sea spray, insinuating itself everywhere, through chinks that were not previously known to exist, and depositing itself where it had no business to be.

   It would be difficult, without going outside the limits of the present century to find record of wintery weather more hardly felt both for its severity and its suddenness. In the winter of 1739-40 a frost occurred which is spoken of as having lasted nine weeks. In 1753-54 again a curiously variable winter was experienced, during which, at times, as much as 17 degrees of frost was registered. In 1762-63 the Thames was frozen over in the course of a frost that lasted for up to a month.

   Leaving those winters out of the question, and coming down to the present century, the winter of 1813-14 is the first that will be found marked with any special degree of severity. Possible, however, a closer parallel to the weather of Tuesday is supplied by the heavy snowfall that took place in the first week of January, 1854. For several days a keen frost had prevailed, and on the night of Tuesday, the 3rd of January, 1854, snow fell so heavily that, backed as it was by an easterly wind, many persons found their doors blocked up in the morning. On one side of the street the ground was left bare; on the other side the snow would be piled up into a drift several feet deep.

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From the Norfolk News (1891) - The protracted wintery weather has proved a hard time for all the small birds, and unless the thrushes succeeded in getting to a more genial part of the country we fear they must have perished, for not one have we seen for weeks. The blackbird has managed to eke out a living under the barley stacks, so also have the chaffinches, but larks and linnets have disappeared. Even the hardy rook has been put to some straits to earn a living. Fortunately for him acorns were very plentiful in the autumn, and under the oaks he has been at work with his powerful beak and claws scattering the brown leaves over the snow. His noisy companion, the Jackdaw, is much subdued, and now has but little to say for himself as he accompanies his more wary cousin.​

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From the Norfolk Chronicle (1862) - In the early morning, the withered sedge by the water-courses is silvered over with hoary rime; and if you handle the frosted flag-rushes, they seem to cut like swords. Huddled up like a balls of feathers, the fieldfares sit in the leafless hedges, as if they had no heart to breakfast off the few hard, black, withered berries which dangle in the wintry wind. Amid the cold frozen turnips, the hungry sheep look up and bleat pitifully; and if the cry of an early lamb fall on your ear, it makes the heart sorrowful only to listen to it. Around the frozen pond the cattle assemble, lowing every now and then, as if impatient, and looking backward for the coming of the herdsman to break the ice. There is no sound of the voices of village children in the winding lanes - nothing but the creaking of the old carrier's cart along the frost-bound road, and you pity the old wife who sits peeping between the opening of the tilt, on her way to the market-town. 

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