1908 late April snow event in England

Having just returned from England I'm missing daffodils, tulips in full bloom and trees taking on a mantle of green. Over Easter the advance of the vegetation was helped by some rainy days. It was a a trip through time to come back several weeks in the vegetation season to Ottawa. But we have the spring flowers and greening of the grass to look forward to.

If your ancestors were around in England in spring 1908 they would have experienced a significant snowfall from April 23 to 26. Nine inches of snow across East Anglia halted horse racing at Newmarket. Oxford received over a foot. In usually balmy East Surrey the snow drifted up to three feet deep. The wonderful collection of photos at overtonpictures.com includes one of this snow event in this Hampshire village.

This event was also a stimulus to creativity, according to the book "The Wrong Kind of Snow." It records that while returning by car to Newcastle from watching the FA Cup Final in London, during which journey Gladstone Adams was forced to stop frequently to clear his windscreen/windshield, he got the idea for the wiper blade.