The Big Freeze of 1963

I loved it at the time, was out on my skis while growing up in Bavaria 🤗🥶

So it’s not recently that reporters out in a blizzard telling us not to go out started 😊

I can only imagine the reason that people of that time (1963/64) managed to survive the severe winter weather was because they we're generation that had gone through the hardships of World War 2. I was 7 years old, living in Kent during the winter of 1963/64, and we all us went to school in spite of the ice and snow on foot. 🌨☃️🛷

Conceived in this winter of Oct 63. Now living in Northern Alberta, Canada and this is a normal winter. After 20 years in sunny South Africa.

Fortunately we were not dependent on ruinables

I lived in outer london and the first snow was a blizzard on xmas night boxing morning

I was 27 and in the London Fire Brigade. I would put my boots on in the morning and they wouldn’t come off until I got home again at the end of the day. We dealt with dozens of burst pipes and fire that had got out of control.

I remember that it was bloody cold for weeks,

Biggest freeze 🥶 in France in 1962

The year I was born🙂 March 1963

I was born in July 1946 and was therefore 6 months old in the 1947 freeze up but of course have no memory of it. In the '62/'63 freeze up I was 6 months into my working life, living in Didcot and working in Oxford. I remember walking through the snow to the railway station but if memory serves me correctly there was only one day, maybe two days, when no trains were running due to snowdrifts or frozen points and I had to walk home again. I remember looking down at the frozen River Thames at the two locations where it was crossed by the railway between Didcot and Oxford. The freeze up in 1982, by which time I was commuting by train to London, caused far more cancellations when I couldn't get to work because by then all the trains between Didcot and Paddington were diesel powered and were having problems with gelling of the diesel fuel.

I was a 12 year old. I had never seen snow before as I was brought up in Africa. I was stuck at a boarding school in West Sussex. The Nissen huts that we spent most of our time in were poorly heated. The food was alien to me. It was a truly miserable time.

Stop with all the doom and gloom, and cost counting!!!
Someone was making money during all this. Cole was sold by the tankful, men were employed clearing snow for 12/14 hours a day, for three months straight. Hardwear stores selling shovels and sledges did booming business. And tow trucks and mechanics had a field day with all those stuck cars!

"Six million people had to share an outside lavatory". Oh how shocking oh gasp oh how unthinkable oh how terrible can you imagine NO INSIDE LAVATORY, it is a wonder people did not kill themselves out of sheer despair because they had to share an outside lavatory! Arent we SOOOO much better off now with uncontrolled immigration, street crime, hideous anymous sterile skyscrapers, mega millionaires and pharmaceuticals running our lives, pubs closed down no community life oh but we are so much happier because we all have lovely inside lavatories, not to mention running water and those wonderful smart phones which do our living for us.

Maybe my earliest memory, i built an igloo in the front garden 😊 ❄ 🧊 🇬🇧 jolly good

Who was born in 1964😂 😂 Is that how they kept warm!!

This is why people of my generation listen with amusement…and doubt…to the semi hysterical voices predicting terrible global warming death and destruction! These days every hot day in summer is always referred to as “the hottest on record”….. We smile and recall the literally arctic winters of 1963….or 1947….

I had pneumonia the previous year and my mother kept me indoors for the whole winter of 1963 and she wouldn't allow me to cross the doors, incase I got my death of cold I felt imprisoned for the duration

WHY ARE THE ELITE HELLBENT ON PUTTING WEATHER FEAR IN PEOPLE

OH BS CLIMATE CHANGR SO THEY CON CONTROL YOUR LIFE MORE

BUT SOME OFF THE SHEEP TAKE IT IN

WAKE UP WEATHER PATTERNS DO CHANGE

1938////1963/////

WeLl, Mr WaTerMan - I haD hEarD tHEse tALeS of "wHat iT uSed tO bE liKe" fRom tHOse tHat bRoUgHt mE up. ANd noW, 60+ yEaRs LaTer, I Get tO eXpEriEnCE it For mYsElf. BrItAiN, eh?

I remember it well. I had just obtained a driving licence and learned in that period to drive an Austin 7 on ice, walked across a Norfolk Broad, saw a car drive down the river Ant and learned to skate. The house water supply froze so Norwich Council paid owners of diesel electric generators to plug them into the water mains which were made of iron to get them to flow. This worked on the street but the house holders paid another quid or so to have house feed put on! Power cuts, reduced basic food supply like bread and what milk. Burn what you could on the grate, ice on the inside of the window. Do not slag off Beeching he was told investigate possibilities. He answered this by pointing out there was a social context and it was up to the government to decide upon it. They ignored it. Others could have changed it. They did not.
Cold feet, cold bedroom ( no central heating), ice on inside toilet, limited coal. We got used to it. Adults moaned and kids sulked but we put up with it. We wore a lot of clothes and washing was limited both personal and for clothing. We were pleased when it passed.

Very pretty card. TFS xxx

Why bring Covid into it? Was going normal until then.

I was doing A Levels, I lost both my maternal grandparents within 5 weeks of each other in January and Feb , we had to walk through the snow for 5 miles just to get to the station to go to the funerals. Very different days but I remember being so cold I wanted to literally die. There was no central heating in those days only coal fires but we did have good blankets.😊

I can just about remember this!! Went to bed, all OK.. Woke up & there was snow up to the window sills. Ice on the inside windows... Milkmen still delivered. Kids were off school (it was Christmas) but would probably have stayed open. My maternal Grandad was a steam engine driver & got to work & home again after several hours of extra shifts.. . Luckily we had the old "coke" fire (when coke meant fuel) & we were stocked up a bit food wise.... This last one inch of snow meant the schools were closed. What happened to us??

I worked at a timber importer's on the Essex coast and the sea froze. When the tide went out on the River Blackwater ( where the ships came in and off-loaded there were ice floes four feet deep.🥶

Mum was expecting me at the time, I arrived in April 1963. My parents had a ginger tom cat called "Ginger," I never did get a chance to meet him, as he strayed out of the house at the beginning of the freeze, and they found his frozen body in the snow on Boxing Day 😢

Ha, minus 22C is warm and just starting to get cold where I live. Try waking up and going out when it is minus 40 C with minus 50 C windchill and having to walk to school. Now that is brutal and yet can get worse. We are not called winter peg for nothing. On the same jet stream as Poland and Siberia. Some years I swear we have been colder.

"Climate change on Steroids". Name a period when the Climate hasn't changed!? It started off as Global warming, now it's Climate change, all based on data & predictions, they have absolutely nothing else to offer, it's an embarrassment. Carbon Tax, nothing more. Meanwhile, the biggest polluters 'China' produce most of what's in your homes, but we do our bit... Not seeing it!?

As British Born Asian this reminds me of my Grandad

We, my sister and I, had a large garden/backyard, and enormous fun. So did my parents but thisbis not their tale.Wemade a 7 foot tall snowman... that's my sister and me. The technique is easy if you're wondering. Just make a snowball and roll it. And roll it ...and roll it :)

iT WAS bOXING DAY, ABOUT 6PM, MOM WENT INTO THE FRONT ROOM TO CLOSE THE CURTAINS, AND SHOUTED, LOOK OUT THE WINDOW; IT WAS SNOWING LIKE HELL, HUGE SNOW FLAKES, WE COULD HARDLY SEE THE HOUSES OPPOSITE. THE START OF 3 MONTHS OF HELL. WEEKS LATER, AND THE ROADS WERE THICK WITH ICE. I WAS SAT IN THE FRONT SEAT OF A BUS, WHICH CAME TO A HALT, A BUS COMING TOWARDS US, AT ABOUT 5 MILE PH. I SAT AND WATCHED, AS IN SLOW MOTION,, IT DRIFTED ACCROSS TO OUR SIDE OF THE ROAD, AND BANG !! HEAD ON. NEITHER BUS WAS DAMAGED, SO AFTER A WHILE, WE WERE ABLE TO CONTINUE. A FEW WEEKS LATER, I TOOK A CHANCE AND DROVE TO WORK. I CRAWLED DOWN A HILL, THAT LOOKED WELL SALTED, BUT WASN'T, AND , JUST LIKE BEFORE, I SAT HELPLESS, AS I CRAWLED DOWN THE HILL, DRIFTED ACCROSS THE ROAD, AND CLOBBERED A PARKED CAR. TALK ABOUT Deja Vu. DAMMNED CLIMATE CHANGE AGAIN EH? BEEN DOING THAT SINCE BEFORE ADAM & EVE.

I've got a postcard, bought 2 years, from Scotland. It show how people have knitted jumpers for horses!

Who was that, who presented an award to Mary Quant?

Who is the blonde lady presenting a lot of this programme?

At least they are interviewing people who were old enough to remember it. I hate it when they have young people on these things talking as if they had been there! Man, you ain't even born yet for another 20 years! Dream on!!
No offense younger folk it's not your fault!🤗🤗🤗🤗🤗

This would usually be GB except for the Gulf Stream as we are on the same latitude(?) as Moscow!!

People coped and the media was sensible

The same thing happened in the Netherlands, and likely more west European countries. It went on for basically the whole winter, even beyond February. Similar to the uk, it started with a mild freeze early december, then a mild period until Christmas, when everything started.

Yes i rember 1953 ,I was Ten then .my dad had to shoval us out of the house the snow drifted up the front door and windows luckily ,he managed to get out ..the back window .even the back was the same had a job to get out .freezing house running out of coal those where the days .But people was different .what id give to go back to the good old days poor then But more happy .

I ment 63

I cycled in the dark from Cambridge to Grantchester on the Cam. Scared out of my wits much of the time.

I remember this. We were trapped on the farm for over 6 weeks....

I remember coming home from work at John Barns Finchley rd to Mornington crest. I was in a bus with the conductor holding a lamp leading the bus. A very slow trip the smog was so thick.

We get winters like this every year or two in Canada.Fortunately our PM figured out that taxing us more will change weather patterns and save the world.

I was born only 1965. There were many sunny days but in the 70's there were many fogs in winter. Hardly see it now. My mum remembers smog in the 50's, she said it was terrible and you couldn't see your hand in front of your face, it was so thick. Had a friend who remembered the winter of '63, he said it was very cold and long lasting. The snow was several feet deep, he lived in Devon.