There was, he said, an oscillation in the weather systems which come from Iceland and the Azores which could mean a return to the weather patterns of the 1960s – hot summers and very cold winters.
This is not great news for sport. The snow is very beautiful, but really it is too cold. Too cold to stumble around with bare arms and legs like the Manchester City and Everton players on Monday night. Never mind the score, or even the snoods, they needed to put jumpers on.
And there must be a limit to the tolerance of the most stoical fan. Where is the pleasure of standing still in sub-zero temperatures for 90 minutes, shrouded like a mummy, sipping Bovril which ossifies as you hold it?
The country may be under-snowploughed and lacking in salt, with aeroplanes iced in at Heathrow and never-ending phone-ins on what the weather is doing right-this-minute-where-you-are, but this is like breadcrumbs to the problems the sporting world is going to face if this is how winters are going to be. The strains, logistical, financial and social, will be huge.
How can rugby union and football and horse racing squeeze in the required number of fixtures if much of the country is going to resemble the Arctic for a couple of months a year?
How can they arrange affordable insurance? There can’t be any space in the calendar for other sports to follow rugby league and turn into all-singing summer games.
There is still not even a universal appetite for a winter break. And even if there was, how to fill the hours of those fans whose passion is driving up and down motorways in the bleakness to follow their team, boosting the economy by buying food and drink and novelty paraphernalia along the way. Their families wouldn’t know what had hit them.
At least any objections to the Qatar World Cup being held in the winter can be lifted, safe in the knowledge that we won’t actually be playing any football here anyway. Some Europeans might even make the effort to go and watch.
Succour could come from embracing the chill. A Winter Olympic bid, complete with frost fairs on the Thames and David Beckham and Eddie the Eagle Edwards serving roasted chestnuts in Union Jack fur coats could be a winner.
We could offer skating on the Serpentine and slalom on the North Downs, ice hockey on the Manchester Ship Canal and curling on the M6.
Perhaps Dominic Cork’s New Year appearance on Dancing on Ice will result in a blossoming second career. Annecy, Munich and Pyeongchang are competing to host the 2018 Winter Games; with a few carefully placed designer handbags here and there a British bid might have a chance.
Alternatively we have darts — resolutely an indoor sport with no needs other than a board, some booze and some arrows. The beaming Phil Taylor came second in the BBC Sports Personality of the Year competition on Sunday, so there should be no shortage of fans to boost the coffers.
Even if we have bread shortages, the players tend to have laid down enough winter padding to take them through to springtime without any problems. Perhaps a regular winter-solstice Ashes-style contest with the Dutch, who are plunged at this moment into a similar chaos of transport inertia and critical introspection, could be the answer.
Or, finally, and least effort of all, how about a period of pan-national hibernation, with the television, lots of blankets, a kettle and a tin of Roses.
Ignore the soon-to-be-postponed English Boxing Day sporting programme, and in the Christmas Day post-mince pie fug switch to antipodean time and the bombastic bright lights and perma-tan of Sky Sports.
Will a record crowd at the MCG and an Australian team foaming at the mouth in anticipation of wiping the smile from English faces be too much for Andrew Strauss?
Will Jimmy Anderson manage to add some menace to his sledging technique? Will Mitchell Johnson be unplayable or unwatchable?
Will England retain the Ashes at Melbourne for the first time since 1986-87? So much to look forward to, and I find that if you stand close enough to the television, with your face at an angle of 45 degrees, you can feel the sun’s rays bouncing off Nasser Hussain’s face.
Sir Craig Reedie
Simon Hart
Brendan Gallagher