The blizzard of 1917

It would seem that the heavy snow fell in late January related to the newspaper story, when the writer says "a week Thursday" I think that would mean 25 January (15 Jan is mentioned as being a Monday and the article is dated 3rd of February which would have been a Saturday, so I don't think "a week Thursday" would refer to 1st of February, not entirely sure on that, will have a look at weather maps to see what matches up best) … the later April storm was around the first two or three days of April and to give some context, temperatures were at all-time record lows for April in the long CET series, matched only once earlier (in 1799), daily means were below zero and overnight lows were near -5 C.

The late January into February cold spell was also quite severe in that series, rarely getting above freezing for the better part of four weeks before slowly moderating … March never warmed up that much and April became extremely cold again at least for the first half of the month. Oddly enough, the next winter (1917-18) brought severe cold to the eastern U.S. but there was mostly average to mild conditions in Britain and presumably Ireland.

I wonder was there an SSW that winter. It would be some sight to see all that snow accumulate overnight only then to melt rapidly during an April day. If we ever got to experience that now( extremely unlikely) quite a few would bemoan that it didn't happen a couple of months earlier.