Winter of 81/82

Deep Easterly

Many a legend has passed through Boards.ie weather about winters past, and more especially the winters of the 80's.

Between studying and smoking today (more of the latter it has to be said..:pac:) I found time to have a skim of the Digital Archive of the Irish Times. Some great reports of the winters of the 80's. Such as the big blizzards of 84, the cold of 86 and 87 and so forth.

It would seem however, that the last truly great winter was that of 81/82.

A winter that began like any other day in meteorological terms on the 7th of December 1981.

Here is a forecast from that day:



pretty benign one would have thought, and considering the chart for noon that day, a pretty reasonable forecast:




The outlook as can be seen was for "cold & breezy" weather. That was certainly the understatement of the year!!!

Tune in next time for more*

*very limited time currently due to increasingly hellish college work, but will add more reports from that winter over the next few weeks. If anybody has any stories, pictures or just good old yarns about that great winter, please please share them with us. We are the winter starved ones..:o:D

heh here in the east as you know that winter culminated in the humungous snowfall of january 1982 ( circa 7th to 11th for the blizzard followed by a weeks freezing artic high ).
The winter then ended.
Mild gunk for the rest of jan,feb and march iirc.
January '87 was fantastic.
I now someone with photo's of snow lying on the frozen river avoca in Arklow from that time.

ninebeanrows

Deleted User wrote: »

heh here in the east as you know that winter culminated in the humungous snowfall of january 1982 ( circa 7th to 11th for the blizzard followed by a weeks freezing artic high ).
The winter then ended.
Mild gunk for the rest of jan,feb and march iirc.
January '87 was fantastic.
I now someone with photo's of snow lying on the frozen river avoca in Arklow from that time.

Late December 08' was good too................. Oooooooops

nacho libre

Deep Easterly wrote: »

Many a legend has passed through Boards.ie weather about winters past, and more especially the winters of the 80's.

Between studying and smoking today (more of the latter it has to be said..:pac:) I found time to have a skim of the Digital Archive of the Irish Times. Some great reports of the winters of the 80's. Such as the big blizzards of 84, the cold of 86 and 87 and so forth.

It would seem however, that the last truly great winter was that of 81/82.

A winter that began like any other day in meteorological terms on the 7th of December 1981.

Here is a forecast from that day:



pretty benign one would have thought, and considering the chart for noon that day, a pretty reasonable forecast:




The outlook as can be seen was for "cold & breezy" weather. That was certainly the understatement of the year!!!

paddy1, maybe something like that is going to happen this weekend. they are only saying it will be cold enough for snow on the mountains. perhaps there will be blizzards in tuam:pac:

i tell you what though, after this consistently cold weather of late, if we don't get one significant snow event this winter i'm going to shake my fists towards the sky with great fury.;)

CrowdedHouse

err....wha' happened that day...

arctictree

My sister was born on 10th December 1981 so I remember the time well. I was 8 years old at the time and we were living in Greystones, Co. Wicklow.

I remember a heavy snowfall and then a clear frosty night. We lived in an estate on a big hill, and being the 80's all the kids used to make their own karts from scrap wood and wheels. So the snow arrived and all manner of improvised sledges where hauled up the hill, from coal sacks and breadboards to the king of all sledges - the car bonnet!!

I remember people remarking at the time that it was very unusual to have this type of weather before XMas. I can only imagine what it was like here in Roundwood. Little did people know what was to happen only a few weeks later...

A

Snowbie

arctictree wrote: »

So the snow arrived and all manner of improvised sledges where hauled up the hill, from coal sacks and breadboards to the king of all sledges - the car bonnet!!

The breadboards where the ferrari of sledges where i grew up in Donaghmede. We use to ahem borrow the breadboards from the trolleys that where delivered into H Williams and Dunnes Stores. The Dunnes stores ramp in Donaghmede SC at the time was about 130 feet long hill made of tarmacaddem with a kerb right at the end. First one to make it to the kerb won but with a bang and a bump or two. At that age you just bounced and got back up and try to go faster. We had rope tied to them like a makeshift steering wheel and more aerodynamic.:cool:
We didn't do the bonnet but there was a car door used once.

As the 80's went on, the concept improved and breadboards became more modified and lethal (faster) as the winters and freeze up came and went. When there was no snow, we used a bucket of water each, lobbed it down the ramp, wait 5 mins, frozed, and slid the night away. Hitting the dry patch when sliding down the ramp usually wasn't fun though :eek:

mike65

Ah the winter of 81/82, the town gas bill for that January/RFebuary was 400 quid! The snow stood for a week but alas and alack we still went to school every day.

bins

arctictree

Snowbie wrote: »

We didn't do the bonnet but there was a car door used once.

There is a golf course near us that has a really steep long hill with a bunker at the end. By '87 we had graduated to using this. That feckin car bonnet was lethal! I remember the look of terror on peoples faces as we whizzed down that hill and then slammed into the hillock before the bonnet and were all thrown into the air! Can't believe there weren't serious injuries!!

copacetic

I remember this one too, have some pics somewhere, the snow in our back garden was above my waist.

My favoured sleigh was the top of a christmas biscuit tin.

Hal1

Biscuit tin ftw! wack some oil on it and weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee. :pac::D

shamwari

The 8th December '81 snow event happened on a day when the schools were shut - that day is a holy day! I have vague memories of snowball fights ands the usual home made sleighs!

The January 82 event was outstanding and has yet to be surpassed by anything since. There was a two foot snowdrift outside the hall door. My father's Cortina was off the road because the thermostat housing cracked with the cold. Another neighbours Cortina faired even worse when it popped a frost plug. In those days we had no central heating and wooden single glaze windows, yet nobody died ! And today, we moan when it reaches freezing point. :pac: !!

Hal1

Everyone had a cortina :pac:

Deep Easterly

From the 9th of December 1981 in the Irish Times: The cold front shown in post 1 left a very cold and unstable airmass in its wake. This was the result:










12 noon chart on the 8th:




To be continued....:pac:

Hal1

I lol'ed at the snow plough drivers going on strike at Heathrow, thinking if we had a reacurrance of that event here, there would be a dispute of some description over a union pay deal. :pac:

Danno

Amazing "arcticle" from the Irish Times! Imagining snow plough drivers as a job title in these parts is laughable, reading of them striking is delerious!!!

Mothman

I've no idea what date, but it was during this winter that -4C was recorded INSIDE in the middle of the dormitory in the boarding school I was in, some where in Dublin.
Every morning there would be a thick layer of ice on the insides of the windows. Towels, face cloths etc were frozen stiff day after day.

To think my parents paid to send me there

Danno

I was too young to remember 1981... but later in in the decade in January 1987 I do remember and that was cold with over 1 foot of snow, possibly more.

Jip

This distinctly stands out in my mind. I was living in Tallaght at the time and our house was at an angle such that the snow drifted up to just below the upstairs window against the house, you could have got out upstairs and slid down it. My dad then opened the front door to be confronted by a wall of snow, it was amazing when you're a kid but I'm pretty sure my dad wasn't too impressed ! He dug himself out anyway as he could get the shovel out of the shed at the back of the house as it was mostly sheltered. We then made little tunnels in the drifts out on the road, and never mind your bread boards, coal bags for the win !
The other memory I have of that occasion was my dad having to hike to Dunnes Stores in Kilnamanagh for bread and milk which was being airlifted there at the time.

Zzippy

Ah, good memories! I was about 7 years old, perfect age for playing in snow - we had a ball that week. We used an old press door that slid perfectly, none or yer car bonnet nonsense!
Remember 87 better, mast have had 6 inches in a couple of hours, and on the main road a few cars had created slippery tracks in the snow - we would run out and grab on to the back bumper and get a tow along the compacted snow, great craic. When the squad car came along we all legged it behind a wall so they wouldnt catch us, only to see 2 lads on the back bumper of the squad car

DOCARCH

I was 9 at the time - aside from all the snow fun, jumping off walls into snow drifts, the rotation of constantly wet gloves on and off the radiators, etc., my overidding memory is that we got out first deep fat fryer - battered deep fried monkfish* and chips - mmmmm.

* monkfish was almost free in those days - too ugly.

TheHairyFairy

I remember this winter as well. A local family who where not that well to do's son had a pair of 70's platform boots, normally frowned on at all other times, suddenly became items of utmost jealousy.

God could he slide in them. He was like Torvilles Dean, he used to fly past us hunkered down and could turn around, go backwards etc. Amazing to see and still makes me chuckle to this day.

Pherekydes

I got married on 16th January 1982 (what a disaster that was) and there was still snow on the ground in central London. I remember getting a taxi to Dublin Airport on the 14th (6 days after the blizzard) and the snow on the main road leading to the airport (the main Dublin-Belfast road at that time) was piled in 10 foot banks either side of the road.

Moar snow!

Freewheeling Ed

mike65 wrote: »

Ah the winter of 81/82, the town gas bill for that January/RFebuary was 400 quid! The snow stood for a week but alas and alack we still went to school every day.

aw.. what a rip off... I got 2 weeks off school , which was spent diving head first off walls into snow drifts and sitting on a small square of lamaniated board flying down the side of a hill.... weeeeeeeee

ah.. happy memories.

jambofc

ah the memorys
was in shankhill south dublin,if i remember correct it snowed for 2 days and three nights non stop!!! we were snowed in for a week the local shops were all out of stock,an american neighbour was out in his car pulling handbrakers and pulling us down the road,brilliant memorys
hope we get more of the same

Deep Easterly

10th December 81 Chart at 12 noon:



From the Irish Times on next day (11th):






Forecast issued on the 11th:




Imagine having a forecast like that today in 'modren' times...:D

Snowbie

I don't actually remember reading that article but reading similar throughtout the 80s, this was common with similar style reports. If that was good, little did anyone know that exactly one month later....sweeeet jebus.

nacho libre

Deep Easterly wrote: »

10th December 81 Chart at 12 noon:



From the Irish Times on next day (11th):






Forecast issued on the 11th:




Imagine having a forecast like that today in 'modren' times...:D

indeed paddy1. hopefully some day we will:)

kerry1960

Unfortunately my memories of this event are rather foggy (:D) , more into wine , women , and song at that time (:rolleyes:) , 2 pics here from a batch marked 'winter 81' have a feeling they are from January but not 100% sure , one taken near Tralee (near late parents home) the 2nd not far from where i live nowdays.......... long long ago.......





No need of a snowplough here then , but still not bad for this ****e location .

Deep Easterly

Fantastic photos Kerry, and great quality too. Looks like perfect snow to me. It looks like the kind of snow that you can lie in, feeling is lovely crunchiness without destroying its texture. Anytime it snows here lately it is just wet, see through stuff that has settled on waterlogged ground.

Love the sky too, came out perfect. Still the same ole look to it back then as now, but at least the weather was different and far more interesting below it than it truly is now.

nilhg

Just back in from having a few pints with some pals of my fathers, was talking to them about hard winters of times past, I remember 81-82 as the winter when the diesel froze in our tractors, but to them while it was cold it was nothing exceptional. One of them could remember someone driving three miles on the (frozen) Grand Canal in the late fifties/early sixties, and it was nothing exceptional to drive cattle to pasture over the frozen canal.

Deep Easterly

From The Irish Times, 12th December 1981:











Mouth watering forecast issued on the 12th December 81:



12 Noon chart for the 12th December 81:




Sat pic taken at 11.33 am on the 12th December 81:



Northern half of the country in snow, as well hills of Munster. Dem were da days.

spideog7

Far be it from me to interupt ye're reminiscing being born a year after this famous '87 I have no recollection. What I do recall is Winter '00-'01.

We recorded -13c min. and three days straight when the temperature failed to go above 0c and about 6inches of snow. I have pictures of being out with a bike in the middle of the turlough which was frozen over with about 8 inch thick ice (the snow froze on top of it ) The neighbours tractor also conked due to frozen diesel in the tank.

I'm not saying it was better than way back when but it was only 7 years ago and it was good, probably the last real Winter we had to be honest and it was more exceptional than any I can recall in the past 15years.

http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=1105

Mothman

spideog7 wrote: »

Far be it from me to interupt ye're reminiscing being born a year after this famous '87 I have no recollection. What I do recall is Winter '00-'01.

00-01 has had a thread or 2 before, do a search. This is the first time 81-82 has been documented, and thanks to DE for the scans.
By all means run a 00-01 thread, but lets keep this one on topic.

spideog7

Sorry, not trying to start a new one or pull this one off topic just reminding everyone it's not all in the past, there's still hope

dathi1

8mm Film footage I took. Jan 82

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Afss7QL4wAc

Scubadevils

That '82 snow really is such a distant memory now. What I would do for another bit of winter weather like that! - or even half, feck it a quarter will do!!!

Freewheeling Ed

dathi1 wrote: »

8mm Film footage I took. Jan 82

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Afss7QL4wAc

great stuff :-)

shamwari

Freewheeling Ed wrote: »

great stuff :-)

+2 - great footage indeed! Where was this taken?

dathi1

+2 - great footage indeed! Where was this taken?

Walkinstown and Crumlin Road South Dublin. The car driving scene has the Children's Hospital on the left side. Notice all east facing roofs have no snow and west facing roofs are packed high. It was a deep easterly. I haven't seen 1 ft icicles since!

Deep Easterly

Shhnips from the Irish Times December 15th 1981:








Forecast Issued on the day:



At 12 noon, 15th December 1981:

grahamo

Great memories of that winter as a kid. I remember my uncle telling me he thought his car had been nicked when he woke up and looked out the window....but it was buried under snow.
I also remember bread & milk etc. being flown into Tallaght by Helicopter.

Deep Easterly

From the Irish Times December 24th 81:





Forecast issued on that day:



Chart at 12 noon 24th Dec 1981:



European Temperatures at 1800hrs 24th December 81: (ECMWF Analysis)






:cool:

FunkyDa

This was the sight that confronted me, when I opened my front door, in Tallaght(Aylesbury), the morning of the big snow

Blizzerthj8

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