It’s coastal proximity means our town swerves the worst of heavy snowfall but that hasn’t always been the case.
Looking back through the archives, the notorious winter of 1963 was the year which saw massive snow drifts and the rare event of the sea freezing over off the Fylde Coast. The winter of 1947 was described as being the hardest in living memory and in more recent times, the winter of 2009-2010 was recognised as being the coldest in decades.
Other notable times were 1981 and the mid 1950s. The photos are fascinating, particularly the ones from the 1940s which show incredible depths of snow and people having to dig their way out.
1. Freezing Blackpool
A wall of snow facing this gentleman on Central Beach in 1947 Photo: Submit
2. Freezing Blackpool
This was in 1981 when a tram came to an unoffical stop Photo: Submit
3. Freezing Blackpool
The scene in a Blackpool street following a heavy fall of snow in 1940. Clearing the snow was everyone's job before they could get out. Photo: staff
5. Freezing Blackpool
Digging out on Newton Drive on February 2 1940. Imagine seeing snowfall like that again... Photo: Submit
6. Freezing Blackpool
Blackpool beach looked like an Arctic wasteland with frozen snow and ice-floes along it's whole length in January 1963 Photo: staff