Hello All, A very general topic here - and, as ever, apologies if the topic has been discussed already - but: weather, particularly the unpleasant kind. Was the '39-'45 period a particularly turbulent one, meteorologically speaking? I ask as I'm sure that the phrase in the thread title crops up an implausible number of times in the war histories I've read. Just in recent months, I've seen the winter and choppy seas off the UK '39-'40 described as 'the worst in living memory', the summer and storms in Normandy in '44 as 'the worst in living memory', the rains and cold in Southern Italy '43-'44 as 'the worst in living memory', the snow and cold suffered by Guderian's 2nd Panzer Army in Russia '41 as 'the worst in living memory', and the brutal winter in the Ardennes in '44 as 'the worst in living memory' - can anybody muster any more examples? I'm fairly certain that there was another example in Slim's Defeat into Victory, (probably rain!) but I can't pin it down... My enquiry is simply whether this is just a lazy turn of phrase beloved of writers or whether all these bad spells were really wholly uncharacteristic of their region/season?
Googling the phrase "The Worst In Living Memory" brings up loads of instances through out history where the phrase has been over used . I don't think its misleading. its a truthful expression but based on the opinion of the author or reporter. My living memory wouldn't be as long as say the Veterans on here so if I was to say "this Winter was the worst in living memory" its a truthful statement from me but to others older than me who can remember a period before I was even born perhaps not so truthful to them? Likewise I think location features in how truthful the statement is you cannot really make a general summary to cover every thing. I would expect the more `accurate` authors/reporters to have first researched the specific area for past climate and conditional statistics but even if they don't the phrase "The Worst In Living Memory" is more of a truthful personal statement or opinion I think? Kyle
I always wonder about weather statistics as for somewhere to be "the coldest" or the "wettest" place on earth someone (or something) has had to have been there to measure it (and how reliable are a million or a billion speadsheet entries / enterers?) and the equipment (how well calibrated / etc) - i.e. someone once put a rain collector for example too near a water run-off point and the place they were measuring looked "pretty darned" wet as a result. Or a sun collector/thermometer that sits in some odd sun trap / shady dell perhaps? I should think for instance that with fuel shortages and a lack of food during WW2 a lot of people would have very easily found the weather "the (very) worst in (their) living memory'" - particularly if their homes or those of those they loved had been bombed out. Or they were travelling a winter route that during peacetime would have been an unlikely (as deemed too unpleasant/hazardous) route to more normally take. Plus there's that amazing "hindsight effect" just as the summer of 1976 is probably the best (and always will be) in my memory (at the mo!) - despite what statistics for other years might later say - I still remember it fondly (!). Snow is always "exciting" until it is not (I seem to remember I liked it much more when I was younger!) and somewhere around the globe (somewhere not necessarily much heard of before) is always getting to experience some "freakish" never yet seen or heard of before weather events. News 24 has a lot of space to fill these days and back in the day you just couldn't get "instant" pictures of whatever new phenomenon had just been experienced or seen. For some there then this was totally new, just as for a lot of the people experiencing those WW2 events a lot of it was wholly new and unsettling. There are some interesting stories though that the WW2 bombing for example affected the weather: http://www.livescience.com/14944-wwii-bombing-raids-contrails-weather-climate.html And perhaps the dust and debris of vast mass movements, the huge burning oil facilities etc. all would have contributed in effect. London for example used to be the Smog capitol of the World, then Los Angeles, Mexico city, now Beijing etc. so it is definitely possible for events (natural and man-made) to have climate altering effects. "Living memory" though might cover actually only a very short period of time. Some of those experiencing it would have been in their 20s or 30s. Were they asking 70 or 80 year olds? Even 70 or 80 years is the blink of an eye compared to the whole of human history or the age of the whole of humankind on earth etc. (we have the actual biblical flood to go back to perhaps, the tsunami that wiped out Santorini/Minoans/Atlantis etc. and the Ice Ages that did for the Neanderthals / or the warm spell just after that actually did for them perhaps!?) I'd say it was a mixture of writers/statistics and the experience of just ordinary humans living through what to them were just extraordinary events.
Some very interesting points to ponder there. I always took 'the worst in living history' to mean that pretty much everyone in the affected area agrees that they've never known it worse - the speaker can't find anyone who differs from the collective opinion. Obviously each individual's statement is a subjective judgment, but practically 100% subjective agreement looks awfully like an objective state of affairs.
