In this issue of Weather

We begin the last issue of 2018 with an account of severe surface icing, due to freezing rain, in the Czech Republic in 2014. This phenomenon is difficult to forecast, given the critical balance between surface (and ground) temperatures and the warm advection that is bringing rain, rather than snow. The paper by P. Zahradníček and his co‐authors ‘The December 2014 glaze event in the Czech Republic: predictability and impacts’ portrays this well, beginning on p. 375. Our 24th annual review of climate from the Hadley Centre at the Met Office begins on p. 382. ‘Global and regional climate in 2017’ by John Kennedy and his co‐authors shows how warm and wet much of the globe remained last year, despite the absence of El Niño conditions. On p. 394, Ian Strangeways’ paper ‘William Henry Dines – a blue plaque commemoration’ gives us an account of the celebration of the addition, earlier this year, of a sign marking the life and work of a pioneer in meteorology in Benson (Oxfordshire). Smog events – now largely absent in Europe and North America – are becoming an increasing hazard in the development world as cities grow and more people need to travel. The effects of a smog event in a northeastern Indian city are given by Sunil Gupta and Suresh Elumalai in ‘Adverse impacts of fog events during winter on fine particulate matter, CO and VOCs: a case study of a highway near Dhanbad, India’ on p. 396. On p. 402, our last paper moves on to consider the details and effects of one of last year's damaging North Atlantic hurricanes as it affected Puerto Rico: ‘Hurricane Maria : 12 hours that changed the history of a country’ by Rafael Mendez Tejeda.