This article has merit in interest but is a precursor to a following article containing the results from a large new work about Met Office gridded data CRUTEM3, HadSST3 and HadCRUT3. Links to the event of 1956 as a validation mark.
In looking for evidence of a major cold snap in France the following personal account article appeared, it has sunspots SSW and lots of falling snow.
The winter of 1956 in the Southern Hemisphere
That year ended with a terribly cold wave in the Southern Hemisphere, with snow mixed with rain at Geraldton in Western Australia, at a latitude 28.48 ° South, which was the snowfall at lowest latitude ever recorded in the Southern Hemisphere. Usually, cold waves affecting Europe and North America are a consequence of stratwarming, which is an unusual heating of the stratosphere above the North Pole, which in turn leads to tropospheric arctic anticyclones, with consequent descent of cold air to lower latitudes.
But not so in 1955-1956, the longest and geographically widest cold wave in the 20th century.
http://www.italyheritage.com/magazine/articles/history/1956-snow.htm
Taster of next
Post by Tim
Tallbloke's Talkshop 
I was born on in June 57. Regards.
My father tells me that winter was bad, very bad. It was the winter that still had waist deep snow in Boston, Lincolnshire on February 6th when I was born, so says dad.
So this is the ultimate anecdotal comment I suppose………
Strewth! Snow in Gerro!
Gerro?
Climate doesn’t exist anymore. It’s all weather, each day to be evaluated, at most, by yesterday. The culture of narcissism, self-indulgence and instant gratification of the West has infiltrated everything and everywhere. This moment is Special because you have an experience never before experienced like this. Your experience is Special because you are Special; each moment of your life, all events that occur within it are unique because you are unique.
Through the Eco-green, God walks the Earth; each day is separate from what came before. Peace is not upon us, but with Prophet Al beside us, it shall come to pass.
Repent, and repent quickly. The day of Judgment is near, and we – actually, you – are wondrous sinners.
Gerro?
Try halfway up the left side of Australia
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Derro%20Gerro
“Slang for the population of Geraldton, a city north of Perth. The people are generally extremely unreasonable, irritatating and rowdy.
They also drive stupid trucks.”
http://theworstofperth.com/tag/geraldton/
The winter of 55-56 was bitter cold with deep snow in the city of my birth, Portland, Oregon (US). There was already snow on the ground at Hallowe’en. We were living in a two-story uninsulated house with a wood-stoked furnace and I was tasked with moving and stacking the wood from the yard where it had been dropped to the cellar where the furnace lived. I also had to get the fire lit using sparse newprint and frozen wood. I was 10 years old at the time and learned the hard way to make kindling with an axe. I also got carried away playing with the poker in the firebox and got it glowing quite bright red. I took it outside to melt some snow, slipped, and landed with my hand across the poker. Still have a scar on my left palm. I still had to keep the fires going all through that winter.
We moved from Portland to Hawaii in May of 1956 and I never saw snow again or missed it for nearly 30 years.
In SW France the snow fell in feb to 45cm deep and stayed for 3 weeks. Temps fell at night to -24°C in places BUT it was still not as cold as ’47 or ’62/3. It is , however, the winter most spoken of by our elder locals.
The alteration of stratospheric-tropospheric (northern hemisphere winter months) anticipates the change (brutal or very fast) in the interplanetary magnetic field. There is no cause and effect. It’s is a synchronic comunication.
———–1956———–
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0273117707003936
In this study we applied again to the outstanding solar particle event of 23 February 1956, the largest one in the entire history of observations of solar cosmic rays….
Feb 1956, arctic oscillation = -4.564
———–2009———–
Exit deep solar minimum
Dec2009 – Jan 2010 = Record value arctic oscillation, see :
See rectangle number 4, red trace (arctic oscillation -AO-) anticipates blue trace (IMF)
Michele
Ooo… you have dug out a fantastic linkage there Michele. I had no idea there was anything unusual apart from the weather.
@ tim
Zeus
🙂
Early view, was for later
The only intent was confirming the spike over France as a way of adding confidence to grid data information, that it is what I think it is. Involves several thousand lines of code with no independent checks on me.
The matter of SST data over land, you’ll have to wait for why. I notice the delay between the land cold 1956 and SST, implying coastal waters are following.
[image updated, was a mistake]
Looking back through the records UK weather in the winter of 1955-56 was indeed cold.
The coldest day of 1956 was February 4, with a low temperature of -9°C. For reference, on that day the average low temperature is 2°C and the low temperature drops below -2°C only one day in ten. The coldest month of 1956 was February with an average daily low temperature of -3°C.
The longest cold spell was from February 9 to February 29, constituting 21 consecutive days with cooler than average low temperatures. The month of April had the largest fraction of cooler than average days with 90% days with lower than average low temperatures.
I remember that one. I graduated from HS in Michigan 1957. Mid winter, first part of 1956 six foot snowbanks, national guard half-tracs vs school buses. Many many lovelies wishing for petting upon, ’twas cold, I was a kid! Home was nice!
In NE Oregon we had 1-3 M of snow, and had a series of cold winters but nothing like that. The local farmer’s co-op was seriously thinking about Barley as a cash crop. Murdered the soft wheat in its crib.
http://www.siskiyous.edu/shasta/env/storm/
Might want to look at Pacific floods too. California had high snow and flood in 1956 and Australia had the Murray Flood: “the greatest catastrophe in South Australia’s history”.
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1956_Murray_River_flood
What an interesting discussion here. The solar link is utterly fascinating. Thank you for the links to Michelle’s work.
Some of these “1956” events are not time coherent with whatever links space weather and earth systems.
Maybe some would be chance and maybe the whole thing is related to a a further less distinct relationship.
Usually devil in the detail Alan. This came about by chance, see an uncommon number, look and unexpectedly there is a human record which in turn links to more numbers.
It looks a good event for much deeper investigation. Unfortunately I am stuck on something else.
Extraordinary record of ice in Antarctica.
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/antarctic.sea.ice.interactive.html
Lock in the lower stratosphere over the South Pole.
Jump cosmic rays.
Growth the ice is associated with a magnetic storm. Jet streams at polar vortex accelerated.
Let’s see the actual shape of the polar vortex. You can see where the air will flow from the north (after the edge of the dark area).
It is clear that chilly air will flow in from the north-west to the east of North America.
http://earth.nullschool.net/#2014/09/20/1200Z/wind/isobaric/70hPa/orthographic=-82.37,43.64,419
That was ‘orrible, spent more than a day finding and fixing a bug in code I wrote ages ago but never really used, Worked but with awkward data omits some of it. The code outputs time series given a list of locations. The routine is the same one for a single location, reacts to being passed a table of locations, snag was they shared in a particular 2D sense.
And so the plots further up this thread are wrong. Didn’t seem right, why I started looking. I’ll reference the correct data later on.
[…] An area of Europe was selected for time series extraction where this includes an abnormal weather event. See https://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2014/09/16/the-snowfall-of-1956/comment-page-1 […]
[…] Met Office, HadSST3,… on The snowfall of 1956 […]
Do you have a date in 1956 for the snow in Geraldton Western Australia ?
No but let’s look
Fun site this one
“Snow
Either snow is exceptionally rare at this location or this station did not reliably report it during 1956.”
I doubt they were set up to record snow.
http://weatherspark.com/history/34064/1956/Geraldton-Western-Australia
This looks more promising
“Snow in Western Australia
Details of the Snowfalls of 1956 (June 26)”
http://www.feargod.net/wa-1956snow.php
Going deeper into search engines 🙂
Huh? Postcard but how old? Ooo dear, don’t get lost on this site.
http://lostgeraldton.com.au/post/52826570233/this-photograph-says-it-was-taken-from-mount#_=_
Looked at the digitised newspapers, only one for 1956, Perth weekly, no mention of weather, utter rag about to go bust.
So the answer is no I do not have a definite snow or sleet sighting.