Freak show

THE experts may be divided on just how much mankind is to blame for global warming - and the politicians unwilling to do much about it - but Evening Press photographers, at least, can testify that the weather ain't what it used to be.

Throughout the year, our snappers have been out and about in all weathers getting the pictures you want to see. As far as they're concerned, 2000 has been a distinctly iffy vintage - and it's not just because of the floods, either.

"In February and March we had blistering days that were like spring or summer, then in summer we had wintry conditions," says snapper Frank Dwyer. "With the floods as well, it's certainly been a pretty unusual year."

It began with an unseasonably warm winter - not that much of a surprise in recent years with winters becoming gradually warmer anyway, but great for bugs, flies and all manner of creepy-crawlies.

By mid-March, we all thought summer had come early. Sunglasses and T-shirts came out and a couple from San Diego, Mary and George Leitner, were snapped by Frank sunbathing among the daffodils at Clifford's Tower.

But the warm spell didn't last. By April, the weather was getting decidedly dodgy. The audience at Britain's first drive-in movie - staged in a supermarket car park in York - shuddered over their flasks of hot soup to watch Grease as their cars were lashed by wind, rain and sleet. The only sunshine was on the screen.

Then in May, Pocklington was struck by a freak of nature more associated with the American mid-west than a sleepy East Yorkshire market town - a twister.

Evening Press reader Kevin Keld captured some of the most dramatic photographs of a tornado the PA Weather centre had ever seen as the twister swirled in the skies east of the town - thankfully without causing any damage.

Dramatic as it was, the tornado was just a warning of worse to come. In June, York was hit by its worst floods for six years. Whole swathes of the city centre were cut off - as was the hapless village of Naburn.

Things could only get better. Or could they? Summer 2000 came close to a washout. On one miserable July day, 1.1 inches of rain fell on Scarborough - more than half the average rainfall for the whole month. Then, on August 21, Frank Dwyer was out exploring the North York Moors with some friends from Essex - and joking with them about the severity of the Yorkshire weather - when, somewhere between Hutton-le-Hole and Lastingham, they walked into the middle of a hailstorm.

"It was amazing," Frank says. "The ground looked like it was covered in snow in the middle of August." It did in Frank's picture, too.

The weather still hadn't finished playing its tricks. Just over a week later there was another tornado - this time over York itself. Evening Press photographer Garry Atkinson was covering a match at Bootham Crescent when he became aware people in the crowd were shouting to him.

"They were calling 'cameraman!, cameraman!'" he recalled. "You don't normally look up at the sky when you're covering a football match, so I didn't know what they were shouting to me about. Then Yorkie the Lion (York City's mascot) came up and tapped me on the shoulder and told me to look up.

"Over the top of the Bootham Crescent end there was a huge tornado revolving in the sky. It looked like an apparition. It looked weird."

By the end of October, southern Britain was in the grip of a massive storm which claimed at least four lives, caused millions of pounds of damage and plunged road and rail networks into chaos.

A tornado devastated parts of Bognor Regis and less than 48 hours later another ripped through Selsley in West Sussex. People in the south of the country were warned to say at home as emergency services battled to deal with the aftermath of the worst weather to hit the south since the great hurricane of 1987.

But even that was just a foretaste of things to come.

The beginning of November brought rain, rain and more rain - and in its wake came floods.

In York, the waters reached their highest levels in recorded history and it was perhaps only thanks to flood defences rebuilt and strengthened after the 1982 floods that the city didn't sink beneath the waves.

Even so, large swathes of York and towns and villages across North and East Yorkshire were left under water, homes and businesses were devastated, and we were all left wondering when and where the floods might strike again.

Warning, or what?