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Weather: Winter snow 1967/68 or 1968/69

Diane1947

master brummie

What winter snow 1967/1968 or 1968/1969 stopped the buses running?​


I have been racking my brain to see what winter the snow was so bad that when I came off night duty my bus managed to get to Perry Barr, and could not go any further, and I had to walk home from there to Kingstanding.
Looking back I did not get home to about 12 noon, but was on duty again that night.
The weather was still bad, but the buses were running, and I managed to get back to Dudley Road.
I was a pupil nurse then, and worked 2 Christmas‘s in a row, and so it was one of the 2 winters in the title of the thread. Any idea thanks
 
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1968​

1968 (8th/9th January): BIG-BEN STOPS; SNOW PLOUGHS TRAPPED!

SNOWSTORM for much of the British Isles (except some NE areas & far SW). In SW England, HEAVY RAIN / WIDESPREAD FLOODING. Elsewhere, after an initial period of RAIN (or SLEET), persistent precipitation / evaporative cooling allowed the rain to turn to SNOW, and this SNOW caused chaos. Big Ben stopped for 4 hr, many villages were cut-off; roads impassable in many areas. Over a foot (circa 30cm) of SNOW fell in the Welsh border counties and conditions were made worse by STRONG WINDS (generally up to 40 knots in GUSTS) causing DRIFTING (some reports of up to 90 cm). This SNOWSTORM has gone down in the history as the storm that trapped the snow-ploughs! Three council snow-clearance lorries were trapped over the West Berkshire downs on the Wantage to Lambourn road. There was also major disruption to the London airports (then Heathrow & Gatwick), and to Birmingham - (in the early 21st century, this snowstorm would have caused near-panic! (Prichard/Weather/JMet)

Weather in History 1950 to 1974 AD - Weatherweb​



 

What winter snow 1967/1968 or 1968/1969 stopped the buses running?​


I have been racking my brain to see what winter the snow was so bad that when I came off night duty my bus managed to get to Perry Barr, and could not go any further, and I had to walk home from there to Kingstanding.
Looking back I did not get home to about 12 noon, but was on duty again that night.
The weather was still bad, but the buses were running, and I managed to get back to Dudley Road.
I was a pupil nurse then, and worked 2 Christmas‘s in a row, and so it was one of the 2 winters in the title of the thread. Any idea thanks
It was the winter of 1962/1963 ... have a look in the thread below ... :)
 
Agree. I can remember one in about 62/63 (primary school) but not so much later - yes, snow but I don't recall it like the earlier on. I think in the early one the snow lingered for ages Turning to icy pavements. Perhaps the later one came heavily and then went quickly.
 
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There was also a winter ciŕcs 1957 to 1959 when I was working at Cannings and was still single when about 5pm, a lot of the buses stopped running, somehow I got into town, but caught a 107 back to New Oscott as the 5 had been stopped.
Bob
 
And during the snowiest winter I remember scenes like this ... :)
A No 42 tram climbing up the Bull Ring in the very snowy winter of 1947.
index.php
 
I left school Christmas 1962. I had to start work the day after Boxing Day. I was just 15 years old, about 5' 4" and weighed about 6 stone and I was going to work for a building firm. I can remember standing at the bus stop at the old West End watching it blizzarding down and thinking it was the end of the world. The pavements were still frozen until May. I stuck the building trade for two winters then decided it was'nt for me.
 
I left school Christmas 1962. I had to start work the day after Boxing Day. I was just 15 years old, about 5' 4" and weighed about 6 stone and I was going to work for a building firm. I can remember standing at the bus stop at the old West End watching it blizzarding down and thinking it was the end of the world. The pavements were still frozen until May. I stuck the building trade for two winters then decided it was'nt for me.
I have to say that even when you had mild winters it was dire in the building trade. To me, it seemed not too bad up until Christmas, and I would work outside right up until Christmas eve. But I really disliked Jan, Feb and March.

Saying that, I did stay with the building trade, and it served me well.
 
I remember I worked in Birmingham 1969 and the snow was so bad that it stopped the buses getting up the Bristol Rd from Longbridge to Northfield so I didnt get to work.
 
the winter of 1962-63 was one of the coldest Britain has known. After a week of catastrophic, lung-clogging smog in early December in which many hundreds of people lost their lives, snow began to fall on Boxing Day 1962 … and did not stop for the next ten weeks.
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I was expecting my first son in 1963 and the Christmas of 1962 was I had to be careful not to slip on the frozen pavements, then the pipes froze in our flat and i had to stay with my mom for a few days.
I remember seeing kids sledging down the hill towards the frozen lake in Ward End Park.
My husband was a bus conductor and to earn overtime he worked after his shift to grit the roads, shovelling grit and salt off the back of a lorry. Nowadays the local councils job but no gritter wagons in those days.
 
I asked my father if the winter of 1947 had been as bad as I had seen it, and the thaw (there is a photo of a train going through New Street up to its axles in water). Dad gave me a pitying look. "Where was I?" He was in the Army in Palestine as an officer in the Royal Warwickshire Regiment. I don't remember much of 67/68 but I do remember having to walk all the way home from school in Edgbaston to West Bromwich via Handsworth in the snow, in a blizzard in 1978, because the buses had stopped running. (We were convinced that our masters had ensured that we were the last school to close). Made me appreciate that the Holyhead Road after Soho Road is quite an uphill incline...
 
I think this was the year. It might only have been half a day of buses not running, but I was at school the winter of 1962/1963


1968​

1968 (8th/9th January): BIG-BEN STOPS; SNOW PLOUGHS TRAPPED!

SNOWSTORM for much of the British Isles (except some NE areas & far SW). In SW England, HEAVY RAIN / WIDESPREAD FLOODING. Elsewhere, after an initial period of RAIN (or SLEET), persistent precipitation / evaporative cooling allowed the rain to turn to SNOW, and this SNOW caused chaos. Big Ben stopped for 4 hr, many villages were cut-off; roads impassable in many areas. Over a foot (circa 30cm) of SNOW fell in the Welsh border counties and conditions were made worse by STRONG WINDS (generally up to 40 knots in GUSTS) causing DRIFTING (some reports of up to 90 cm). This SNOWSTORM has gone down in the history as the storm that trapped the snow-ploughs! Three council snow-clearance lorries were trapped over the West Berkshire downs on the Wantage to Lambourn road. There was also major disruption to the London airports (then Heathrow & Gatwick), and to Birmingham - (in the early 21st century, this snowstorm would have caused near-panic! (Prichard/Weather/JMet)

Weather in History 1950 to 1974 AD - Weatherweb​



1968​

1968 (8th/9th January): BIG-BEN STOPS; SNOW PLOUGHS TRAPPED!

SNOWSTORM for much of the British Isles (except some NE areas & far SW). In SW England, HEAVY RAIN / WIDESPREAD FLOODING. Elsewhere, after an initial period of RAIN (or SLEET), persistent precipitation / evaporative cooling allowed the rain to turn to SNOW, and this SNOW caused chaos. Big Ben stopped for 4 hr, many villages were cut-off; roads impassable in many areas. Over a foot (circa 30cm) of SNOW fell in the Welsh border counties and conditions were made worse by STRONG WINDS (generally up to 40 knots in GUSTS) causing DRIFTING (some reports of up to 90 cm). This SNOWSTORM has gone down in the history as the storm that trapped the snow-ploughs! Three council snow-clearance lorries were trapped over the West Berkshire downs on the Wantage to Lambourn road. There was also major disruption to the London airports (then Heathrow & Gatwick), and to Birmingham - (in the early 21st century, this snowstorm would have caused near-panic! (Prichard/Weather/JMet)

Weather in History 1950 to 1974 AD - Weatherweb​


 
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