Does anyone know how we got 3 severe winters - 1947, 1963 and 1979 ( to a lesser extent) so close to each other ?

Most winters we are scrabbling around to find a cold spell and a fall of snow - our default winter is always zonal and mild - snow and cold is always the exception to the normal

But if you had experienced 1947 - it is a once in a lifetime event for sure - how did we get 1963 so close and 1979 following that

Truly remarkable

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And oddly all 16 years apart

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And although nothing much happened in 1994/95,  remember what happened at the start of Winter 2010-11....16 years on again!

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Could add winter 1939/40 on the that list, I think Jan 1940 was a very cold month, in fact many second world war winters were pretty cold I think.

That these winters were 32 years apart, andd given their relative severity compared to past winters in the CET record, I don't find this especially noteworthy. However, as alluded to above, the 40s had an increible run of cold winters... If my memory is not mistaken, 5 or 6 months sub 1c in the 8 winters from 1940 to 1947.

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Then there was a mild interlude from 48/49 and the colder winters returned in the early 50's of course. If you were born in say the mid 30's you would have experienced some cold winter as a kid and probably thoguht it was the normal.

We got it because the pressure patterns of the time allowed it, it happened because of natural variation.

Why do I think this is a daft question with an obvious answer?

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I vaguely remember the 1947 winter, walking to school as a 5 year old. The roads and the footpaths had been cleared and all the snow was in the gutters, so we walked along the top of those heaps of snow, (probably pretending to be polar explorers).

1963 was completely different, almost no snow for the entire winter in Macclesfield as we were sheltered from the weather by the Pennines.

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