The Bomb, The Twist and Radioactive Dance Crazes
Wet summers have long been a bone of contention for British holidaymakers, and never more so than during the Cold War. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, atmospheric testing of thermonuclear weapons provided a convenient – and arguably accurate – scapegoat upon which to lay the blame for soggy summer months. As mushroom clouds rose in Nevada and torrential rains fell in British seaside towns such as Morecambe, it was very easy to make a connection between foul weather and apocalyptic weapons tests.
As I’ve discussed in a previous article, in the early 1960s, a formidable Morecambe town councillor named Nellie Bolton made it her mission to ban nuclear bomb tests, not for ethical or humanitarian reasons, but purely to preserve summer trade in her small toy shop, which she felt had been damaged by atomic test-induced weather. Mrs. Bolton’s regular ramblings at council meetings provided ample amusement in the local press at the time, inspiring other townsfolk to offer their own theories on the cause of the meteorological misery.
One letter, penned by Mr. C. Mundi of Lancaster, appeared in the Morecambe Visitor of 7th August 1963, and offers a particularly bizarre hypothesis. Forget thermonuclear tests and radioactive fallout, it seems that the terrible weather patterns plaguing Britain in the early 1960s were caused by… the Twist. Yes, the fanatical dance craze popularised by Chubby Checker. Over to you, Mr. Mundi:
Sir, — I notice in the “Visitor” that Councillor Mrs. Bolton persistently blames the testing of atomic bombs for the wet summers that we have been having these past few years.
Whilst Europe has been having generally wet summers, Asia has been having dry ones. I should not have thought that the testing of atomic bombs would affect the weather of Europe and not Asia. Now that a test ban treaty has been initialled, can it seriously be suggested that Morecambe will be blessed with dry summers from now on?
After much study of the subject of weather, I suggest that the reason we have had such wet summers of late is solely due to a dance called the Twist.
Wet summers and the Twist have gone together. This is because the Twist is a variation of the original African rain making ceremonial dance, as practiced by the Hottentots. In fact, it was so successful that it was banned by Dr. Livingston on feast days and during harvest time, when dry weather was needed. In Egypt it never rains, and I suggest that is because the dance that is, and always has been popular in that country is the Belly Dance.
I am sure that if the Twist were banned and that if someone gave a lead in popularising the Belly Dance in Morecambe, dry summers would be the rule instead of the exception. — Mr. C. Mundi, Lancaster.
It’s difficult to ascertain just how serious Mr. Mundi was being when he sat down to write his letter that August day back in 1963. Did he actually believe that a dance craze could summon enough potent tribal power to bring about rain storms? Did he really reckon that if teens switched their allegiance to the Belly Dance, sweltering summers would return? I doubt it. The letter is, in my opinion, a sarcastic joke. Surprisingly, however, there may in fact have been some scientific accuracy lurking between the lines…
A look at Morecambe’s local press archives finds the first mention of the Twist in The Visitor of 19th January 1962, wherein the dance was decried as ‘the latest piece of stupidity to be imported from America’. Nevertheless, local teens couldn’t get enough of the ‘craziness’, and were pictured Twisting the night away at a local nightclub. The weather that week: ‘inclement and atrocious’, with a ‘bitterly cold, biting wind’ and ‘diagonal rain’. Coincidence, or were more sinister forces at work?
Let’s explore three possible causes for the dire weather that week:
Potential Cause 1: It was January. I’m no meteorologist, but January tends to be pretty chilly.
Potential Cause 2: Excessive teenage Twisting had caused a fallout of supernatural rainmaking energy.
Potential Cause 3: Atmospheric nuclear weapons testing had resumed in late 1961 after a three year hiatus. This seems to me the most sensible suggestion, so let’s explore it in more detail…
In 1958, bowing to scientific and public pressure, the US and USSR had agreed to a ‘voluntary moratorium’ (pause) on testing nuclear weapons in the atmosphere. One of the main reasons for the pause was environmental disruption. In the seven years since 1951, scientists concurred that rain had become more frequent and ‘increasingly radioactive’, and that ‘never before in recorded history [had] there been such a concentration of intemperate weather conditions’. During these same years, 269 atmospheric weapons tests had been conducted worldwide, many of which led to natural – and public relations – disasters and stoked fears that the weather of the atomic age was doomed to be diabolical. In 1954, for instance, news spread that a Japanese boat named the Lucky Dragon had unwittingly sailed into the fallout plume of a US test, where it encountered some rather nasty weather conditions…
...[The] sky began to change in a rather odd way. It was as though a high fog were forming. Then a light rain or drizzle started to fall. [The crew] were puzzled at first when tiny bits of whitish ash came swirling down on the decks. ‘It looks like the beginning of a snowstorm,’ one of them said. (From The Voyage of the Lucky Dragon by Ralph Lapp, 1958).
All the fishermen on board Lucky Dragon required intensive medical treatment after their encounter with the deadly weather, while one ultimately succumbed and died. If atmospheric testing continued, it seemed that in the not too distant future, people checking the weather forecast would no longer be wondering, ‘How likely am I to need an umbrella today?’ Rather, it would be a case of, ‘How likely am I to die horribly from radiation poisoning if I get rained on today?’
The moratorium on testing seems to have had an instantaneous result on the weather: the average UK yearly temperature in 1958 was higher than it had been for nine years, while the holiday season of 1959 was an exceptionally hot and sunny one, unsurpassed until the long, hot summer of 1976.
Then came 1961, which saw atmospheric testing return with a bang, as well as witnessing the rise of the Twist. As nuclear tests increased and the popularity of the Twist soared, summer temperatures across the UK plummeted. While the teenagers were twisting and shouting, gale force winds were prematurely twisting leaves from the trees and seaside business owners were shouting about the summer trade that had been stolen from them. 1962 saw Britain’s average yearly temperature nosedive to its lowest level for over two decades and culminated in the infamous Big Freeze, the coldest winter in 200 years. Somehow, I don’t feel that the Twist was to blame: 1962 also saw the highest number – by a long shot – of nuclear tests ever conducted in a single year.
The early 1960s saw temperatures and the Cold War plunge to their coldest levels; no wonder teenagers had to resort to vigorous Twisting to keep themselves warm. Who can blame them for indulging in a dance which many felt was vulgar, sexually provocative and indicative of society’s loosening morals? If I were faced with an impending thermonuclear apocalypse and believed the world was going to end any day, I’d let my morals slacken off a bit and have a bloomin’ good raunchy boogie, too! The Twist might not have been capable of summoning rain, but it was able to bring fun and sunshine into lives that otherwise would have been very dark.
For the last word, I’ll hand over to Mr. L. Rothwell, who wrote to The Morecambe Guardian on 19th January 1962:
Of course [the Twist] is a crazy dance, but it’s a crazy world we live in. The Twist is no more crazy than monkeys in space, radioactivity as the result of nuclear tests, and war. Surely war must be the maddest craze of all? Can you do the Twist? Who? Me? Put the gramophone on, baby!
I couldn’t have put it better myself. Let’s twist again.
By Rebecca Shaw
Sources
The Effects of Nuclear War on the Weather and Climate, E.S. Batten.
The Morecambe Guardian, 19th January 1962.
metoffice.gov.uk.
Leicester Mercury, 13th September 1958.
The Visitor, 19th January 1962; 7th August 1963.
The Voyage of the Lucky Dragon, Ralph Lapp.
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