At about the time that we were starting to wonder if April could get any colder, I came across a reference to even more unseasonal weather in a book I was reading about Southern Region trains on British Railways. This was a snow storm said to have struck Tunbridge Wells on August Bank Holiday in 1956. A photograph (right) appeared to supply evidence that it happened.

For a couple of weeks, I believed in this strange occurrence. Then I thought I would check on the Internet, where something so unusual would surely be described. It was — but the snow turns out to have been ice, hailstones actually.

The International Herald Tribune reported: “This southern English city called out its snowplows to clear away five-foot drifts of hailstones from a freak summer thunderstorm. Thousands of tons of ice fell on Tunbridge Wells, within half an hour, bringing all traffic to a halt and sending pedestrians running for cover. Some of the hailstones were the size of golf balls. “The storm was part of a patchwork of crazy weather that hit southern England on the last day of its annual August Bank Holiday. The hail smashed thousands of windows and froze hundreds of vehicles into a solid icepack.”