Retro: Not snow bad as this lot winter of 1962-3 and the big freeze of 1947, which are both reckoned some of the worst in living memory. As our pictures of the 1962-3 winter show, snow ploughs had to be used to get through huge snow drifts and barges were even iced up in the Canal Wharf. Eventually ice breaker barges had to be called in to free Sheffield canal. Nicknamed the Little Ice Age, the snow stuck around for 70 days, according to the weather station at Weston Park Museum. So many football matches were cancelled that the Pools Panel had to be invented to decide the most likely outcome of games so that people could continue to play the pools. Every single match in the country was cancelled for two weeks running. Outlying Peak District farms, where the snow was eight feet high in many places, had to have food parcels dropped off to them. Sheffield city Engineers Department spent a thenrecord £140,000 on salting and gritting 53,000 miles of roads and clearing 14,000 tonnes of snow, twice the amount that they had ever previously spent. Famously, a plan to use explosives to clear the Snake Pass failed because no-one could get to it through the snow. In 1947, the effects of war and rationing made the tough winter of 1947 far worse for Sheffielders. Snow fell every day in the UK between January 22 and March 17 and it was so cold that it remained on the ground for much longer than that. As coal stocks dwindled, power cuts were ordered by the government and there were fears that Sheffield’s heavy industry could grind to a halt, leading to lay-offs and families struggling with no money coming in. Milk ran out in February as supplies from farms could not be transported to the city. Prisoners of war were put to work clearing the snow in Lodge Moor.
Posted on: Sun, 25 Jan 2015 12:04:24 +0000
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