The Secret of the League by Ernest Bramah

The autumn of 1918 had proved unusually mild. It was said that many of the migratory birds delayed their exodus for weeks beyond their normal times, and in sheltered gardens and hedgerows in the south of England flowers and fruit were making an untimely show; but about midday on the 24th of November it began to grow dark, and, without any indication of fog, it grew darker, until the greater part of England and Wales was plunged into a nocturnal gloom. As there was a marked fall in the temperature, men looked up to the clouds and predicted snow, but they were wrong. Had it snowed it might have been the White Winter of 1918, for that night the frost began, and the 24th of November had already become an ill-omened date to usher in a frost. It did not belie its character.

The next day broke clear but bitter, and those who read newspapers learned with curious interest that during the night the seven-tailed comet of 1744 had been observed by several astronomers, to the great confusion of their science, for its appearance was premature by a round hundred thousand years. The phenomenon afterwards grew into a portent to the vulgar mind, for that was the beginning of the great frost that lasted seven weeks without an intermission.