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The weather for mid-April 1998 had some of the worst weather to occur during April for a number of years. The problems started on the Thursday 9th of April, when fronts became stationary over central England and south Wales. Cold Arctic air was pushing southwards, whilst much milder winds were pushing northwards and this temperature gradient produced copious amounts of heavy rain, thunder and hail. These conditions continued into the Good Friday and at this stage flooding was occuring as rivers began to burst their banks as rain totals approached 3-4" in places. With the colder air digging in, some places in the Midlands had snowfalls. The cold Arctic air was already across Scotland and Ulster by Good Friday with snow and hail showers and these spread further southwards during the Saturday as the fronts finally began to retreat so most areas by Sunday had snow and hail showers. At first, Sunday began dry and bright but the showers rapidly broke out during the afternoon. By Easter Monday, the snow showers broke out earlier than they did on the Sunday especially across North Wales and these spread into the Midlands during the late morning. Shower activity was renewed again during the Monday evening as a trough moved through so some areas woke up to a snow cover on the Tuesday morning. There was a covering across Ulster as a polar low moved through this region into the Irish Sea. The Isle of Man had a particularly heavy wet snowfall with depths of snow of 11cm reported at the airport. This polar low moved into the southern parts of the NW of England and NE Wales during Tuesday evening with heavy snowfalls giving depths of snow of 3cm at Manchester and 30cm at Moel-Y-Crio in North Wales by the Wednesday morning. Further south, central parts were recovering from the floods of the previous week.
