It may be forgotten, but it is still winter. In fact, 30 years ago (February 1978) southern Britain was struck by one of its worst blizzards in the last century.

Heavy snow began falling in the West Country before a blizzard blew up on February 18. Two hikers deliberately went on to Dartmoor to experience the storm and were incredibly fortunate to survive. “We were enveloped in a freezing white hell and a screaming wind that tore at us in all directions,” wrote G.A. Southern in A Winter’s Tale. “We were literally stopped in our tracks, unable to think or walk or speak or see . . . The real terror was the inability to breathe. I was sucking snow into my lungs.”

The storm carried on and by the 19th most of the West Country was buried in snow and cut off. The Bristol Evening Post summed up the scene in Somerset: “A vast white desert after gale-force winds whipped up 15-foot drifts leaving thousands stranded in isolated villages.”

Some cottages could only be reached through upstairs windows. Power lines came down and blackouts affected thousands of homes, water supplies dried up when pumping stations lost power and commercial greenhouses collapsed under the weight of snow. A wedding party was trapped in the east Devon village of Broadhembury for six days; extra rations were flown in by helicopter.