Colder still in 47

I READ with interest your article on the Big Freeze of 1963 (Gazette, February 28)and the comment that this was the worst winter of the last century.

What about 1947?

I was born in February that year and my parents often regaled me with the tale of the midwife’s car being dug out of a snowdrift, so she could assist at my birth!

In the winter of 1947, snow fell somewhere in the UK from January 22 through to March 17.

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Railway lines and roads were blocked with snow drifts, some more than 5m deep, and because of this villages were cut off and had to have food airlifted to them.

It was impossible to get vegetables or coal out of the ground and there were electricity cuts.

When there was finally a thaw it caused enormous floods because of the volume of snow.

Yes, 1963 was very cold, but 1947’s winter had the greater volume of snow and from what I have read caused a great deal of hardship.

Sue Algar

Mantling Road

Littlehampton