"Anecdotes" are hardly scientific, but my Dad relocated from Poland to British Columbia when the Nazis moved in 1939. He remembers that the Fraser River would freeze up in Winter, allowing he and his buddies to walk across on the ice to a Liquor Store on the other side. They made money selling booze. That same stretch of river NEVER freezes up now. I'll bet there are thousands of stories like that, all over the World. We just never hear them. Of course, the Naysayers will tell you that there is no basis in fact to these anecdotes. The preponderance of memories of our ancestors is ignored.