Without records, weather historians turn to contemporary accounts

Complete weather records only started in 1911 but, in the accounts of the times, two winters stand out as really extreme – 1683/84 and 1739/40
In the hit parade of cold winters, 1962/63 and 1946/47 vie for the title of the worst winter of the 20th century. But when we talk about the worst winter ever, we have a problem. Records for the UK as a whole have only been kept since 1911, though temperature records for central England do go back to the 1650s. So, we mostly rely on contemporary acc