SOME HIGHLIGHTS OF THIS EDITION WERE:

THE GREAT GALE OF 2-3 JANUARY 1976
On Friday 2 January 1976 Britain suffered its worst meteorological disaster for 23 years when a rapidly intensified depression swept across Scotland to the North Sea and created nationwide gale havoc and marine flooding. By the end of the following day, during which the depression crossed Denmark to northern Poland, some 60 persons were dead.

A TORNADO'S SLENDER PATH
Late in the evening on 1 December 1975 there was an outbreak of tornadoes in East Anglia as a cold front traversed the region from the west. At least five separate incidents took place, four of them in Norfolk.

AN OLD WILTSHIRE WEATHER PROVERB
'Plant your 'taturs when you will, they wont come up before April.' Garden enthusiasts marvelled last winter at the way in which the continued mild weather coaxed the spring flowers into looming at the same time as the autumn and winter ones. This old proverb nevertheless recognises that a mild winter does not necessarily raise the ground temperature sufficiently to hasten the growth of root vegetables such as potatoes. Nor does it, of course, exclude the possibility of an uncongenial start to spring.

AN EARLY FOG PHANTOM, ALIAS THE BROCKEN SPECTRE
An early written account of the startling phenomenon know in mountainous districts as the Brocken spectre was provided three centuries ago by John Aubrey in his unpublished work 'Memoires of Natural Remarques in the County of Wilts.' Aubrey's night-time spectre was not embellished by a diffraction-induced glory, and it was observed in the low country in Wiltshire.

SOME WEATHER CENTENARIES FOR 1976
1176: North sea floods in the Netherlands and in Lincolnshire. The ocean...rose higher than usual, broke through the dykes of Holland, which of old had been raised against the tempestuous force of the waves, and broke into that low flat country on the 7th of the ides of January, drowning almost all the cattle as well as a multitude of men.

RAPID PRECIPITATION FROM SUPERCOOLED FOG
During the recent severe fog in London (an event which must now be classified as rare), I observed a rapid build-up of ‘rime-frost’ in a low-lying suburb to the east of the capital. It took place over an area probably not more than 2km square in the northern part of Stratford; this district has few claims to fame, but one of them is that it was the home of Luke Howard, the Father of Meteorology in the nineteenth century.