But it may be proper previously to remark that the first week in
January was uncommonly wet, and drowned with vast rains from
every quarter: from whence may be inferred, as there is great
reason to believe is the case, that intense frosts seldom take place
till the earth is perfectly glutted and chilled with water;* and hence
dry autumns are seldom followed by rigorous winters.
(* The autumn preceding January 1768 was very wet, and
particularly the month of September, during which there fell at
Lyndon, in the county of Rutland, six inches and an half of rain.
And the terrible long frost of 1739-40 set in after a rainy season,
and when the springs were very high.)

January 7th. -- Snow driving all the day, which was followed by
frost, sleet, and some snow, till the 12th, when a prodigious mass
overwhelmed all the works of men, drifting over the tops of the
gates and filling the hollow lanes.

On the 14th the writer was obliged to be much abroad; and thinks
he never before or since has encountered such rugged Siberian
weather. Many of the narrow roads were now filled above the tops
of the hedges; through which the snow was driven into most
romantic and grotesque shapes, so striking to the imagination as
not to be seen without wonder and pleasure. The poultry dared not
to stir out of their roosting-places; for cocks and hens are so
dazzled and confounded by the glare of snow that they would soon
perish without assistance. The hares also lay sullenly in their seats,
and would not move until compelled by hunger; being conscious,
poor animals, that the drifts and heaps treacherously betray their
footsteps, and prove fatal to numbers of them.