The newspapers and other media are of course delighting in the unusually severe weather currently affecting the UK and Europe, with apocalyptic headlines and images dominating print and broadcasting. A casual search of EEBO reveals some of the kinds of God-fearing and similarly sensationalist texts produced in response to extreme snows four or five hundred years ago. On a broadsheet from 1571, for example, is printed ‘A prayer to be sayd in the end of the mornyng prayer daily (through the dioeces of Norwich) during the tyme of this hard and sharp wether of frost and snow to craue mercye for our synnes and release of this sore punishment at the mercifull handes of our good and gracious God’. About a century later, in the same year the above sermon was printed, another broadsheet told of ‘Sad news from Salisbury, and other parts of the west of England. Being an account of a most sad and dreadful frost and snow, which hapned on the 23d. of December 1684. in and about most parts of the west of England, which froze to death many poor passengers who travelled the rode, besides many beasts, incredible to believe, but that some who were in the same storm are alive to justify the truth thereof … To the tune of, Aim not too high’…