January 1952 & 1953: When Weather Really Was Extreme
January 30, 2024
By Paul Homewood
While we’re still in January, let’s carry on with our look at the non-extreme weather of the 1950s:
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January 31st 1953 marked the great storm, which sunk the Stranraer ferry, then brought the Great North Sea Flood:
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Costa Hill, by the way, is 151m high; just the sort of the place the Met Office would use now to scare the public. 109 kts is an unbelievable 125 mph.
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NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
This from city-journal on electric vehicles..
https://www.city-journal.org/article/tapping-the-brakes-on-electric-vehicles
This from city-journal on electric vehicles..
https://www.city-journal.org/article/tapping-the-brakes-on-electric-vehicles
And this from a time when Carbon Dioxide (and all its terrors) hadn’t even been invented! (/sarc.)
There are some interesting pictures of mild winters from around the world.
https://www.boredpanda.com/freezing-cold-winter-temperature-pics/?cexp_id=87417&cexp_var=9&_f=featured
Love the use of bananas for measuring the depth of snow
Years ago, I recall reading that folks in the Orkneys would place rocks in vehicles so the center of gravity was lower and the wind was less likely to blow them over. I think this made the news because a person was killed in a blow-over-a-cliff situation. Fuzzy now, but the “rocks” might have been coal. Maybe a native of GB can verify this. Yes. No. Maybe. 🙂
Rocks probably I’d guess. If I recall correctly Caithness (I’m sure on that one) and Orkney have sandstone which can be split into flagstones and roof tiles in a similar way to slate. That would be suitable to put in the boot(trunk) of a car. But I’ve no personal knowledge.
When I was younger before I was allowed to drive and in the days of rear wheel drive cars in winter my dad always carried a couple of bags of grit and a spade in the boot. This served two purposes, weight on the drive wheels for driving in the snow. When needed the grit could be used on the ice and snow, along with the spade.
This reminded me of the “Great Smog” in December 1952 reportedly causing 4000 excess deaths in London from an anticyclone temperature inversion and coal smoke, that occurred a few weeks before the news reports above.