Saturday, March 04, 2006
Snow
South Shields awakes to snow!
The arctic weather conditions that have been affecting much of the country this week eventually arrived in "Sunny Shields" this morning. After three nights of heavy frosts, snow clouds rolled in from the North during the early hours of the morning blanketing the town and making roads tricky to negotiate. This picture of King Street in the town centre was taken at 5.30 a.m. this morning on my way to work at the Corner Shop, the only others around at that time of the morning were market traders setting up their stalls in readiness for what looked like a quiet day. The temperature was a bone chilling -3 C.
Despite all of the predictions of global warming producing more winter storms,we have experienced a quiet winter so far, the only other snow fall was a couple of hours one day in November last year. It seems so much different to years gone by when we were used to seeing snow over many weeks each winter.
I particularly recall a Saturday in February 1976 when I was working for a department store in Newcastle-Upon-Tyne with fellow Councillor Eddie Russell; there had been light falls of snow all week from a cold northerly front, but by mid-morning the winds had turned to the east bringing heavy falls of snow and freezing tempratures all the way from northern Russia. It quickly became apparent, from our viewpoint high above the Tyne, that public transport was experiencing difficulties in moving around Newcastle. The Byker Bridge became blocked by snowdrifts almost two metres high and news arrived that drifts had also formed on the Tyne Bridge, by 2.00 p.m. we made the decision to leave work early and battle against the elements in our journey back to South Shields. A car ride that might normally have taken thirty minutes transformed into a very worrying two hour marathon as we struggled to find a good road leading out of Newcastle. The Coast Road dual carriageway was littered with crashed vehicles and blocked with drifts, the Tyne Bridge was blocked with drifts, Byker Bridge was blocked with drifts, the Fossway was similarly affected, and City Road was almost impassable. However, we eventually struggled along past St. Peters and crawled towards the Tyne Tunnel, we were expecting to find that weather conditions might be a little better down at the coast, but this was not so.
The snow continued to fall as the winds strengthened from the east for the next five days. Massive snow drifts along the Leas built up on the Coast Road, one reaching roof level at the Bamburgh public house (often seen on BBC television as competitors complete the Great North Run), the situation became worse when a Council snow plough became bogged down near Redwell Bank and another plough was sent to rescue it. The weather was winning and there was nothing other to do than take the decision to close the coastal route from South Shields to Sunderland, the road was not reopened until four days later.
Of course, people somehow managed to get to Cleadon Hills with their toboggans, the hills were packed with children enjoying the deep snow, as were Blackberry Hills, facing the Coast Road. There were pictures published in the Shields Gazette showing small ice flows passing under the Swing Bridge at Newcastle, and the Tyne was almost frozen solid at Haydon Bridge!
I understand that the winters of 1962 and 1948 were equally harsh, but these warnings that we were about to enjoy such a winter this year appear to be false. The snow today did not take too long to melt as the sky cleared and the sun came shining through, however the temperature at mid-day was still cold enough to leave snow lying on Littlehaven Beach as the picture below shows.
Needless to say, the most popular telephone requests at the Corner Shop this morning was
"do you sell sledges?"
unfortunately, we could not think of anywhere in town where you could possibly buy one, there are no specialist toys or sports shops left here! Ah...Ripons, or Clarkes!
(Now there's something for our Councillors to think about as they decide how to develop and plan the town centre over the next five years or so - they would like to build office accomodation on the site of the multi-storey car park in Mile End Road, it would be so nice if the ground floor could be kept for specialist, independent retailing - please, no more national "cloning" chains.)
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Curly Born in 1956
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