1.   A very hard winter boosted the demand for natural gas.

2.   All in all, the young have the odds stacked against them, especially in a hard winter.

3.   But it has been an unusually hard winter season, too.

4.   In a hard winter, many birds starve.

5.   It looked as though it would be a hard winter.

6.   Let the hard winter come!

7.   Seb saw little of the Wychwood gipsies during the hard winter months that followed Christmas.

8.   We are facing the prospect of a very hard winter.

9.   Mr Stitt pointed out that mountain accidents tended to happen at similar times -- during hard winter conditions, at weekends or in holiday periods.

10.   An especially hard winter in the Northeast may have driven some students to choose schools in the South.