by Gwyneth Endersby, Record Assistant

Introduction

The weather has been, and continues to be, a constant feature of people’s lives. Weather-related references in documents and visual representations allow us to glimpse observations, attitudes, and responses to it at points in time over a 350-year period.

Descriptions of weather in records held here at the Record Office range from historic photographs, impromptu remarks in early diaries and parish registers about notable manifestations, to routine logging in 18^th-century ships’ voyage books, and the methodical late-19^th-century daily observations of lighthouse keepers’ records intended for the Met Office’s Annual Register.

• Left: BU07360 Middlesmoor’s only road out of the village, cleared by villagers in 1947, by Bertram Unné
• Right: BU07363A Mr Reg Lee making a call from the telephone box at Middlesmoor in snow-bound Nidderdale, 1947, by Bertram Unné. Eventually, the telephone box was relocated from the top of the village to a lower, less exposed, position

Weather reporting: early notes and descriptions

“Slabbering showers”… “snyth wind”… a “louring sky” …“great drops of pritty snow” [Farm diary, 1671 – ZCG V 8/5]

ZCG V 8/5 Detailed daily weather observations – sometimes in dialect – populate the left hand margin of this anonymous farming diary of 1670/71, in the Cholmley of Whitby family archive

Ad hoc weather references, such as those found in parish registers, letters and diaries are, perhaps not surprisingly, subjective and at times highly descriptive.  They almost always relate to unprecedented occurrences such as flooding, severe gales or abnormally heavy snowfall, and the devastating effects these have on parishioners, on the church itself, on farming or on industries such as lead mining.

PR/TNL 1/1 “A prodigious quantity of snow” in 1719 is noted in Thornton in Lonsdale parish register

PR/OTN 1/1 Hurricane damage to the church is recorded in North Otterington parish register, 1726

PR/HEL 1/5 Detail from a page in Helmsley burial register recording the burials of the Sunley and Holdforth families, of apprentice William Wood and of Elizabeth Moor, following their drowning in a flash flood in November 1754

Eighteenth-century travel journals are a good source of early weather observations in countries visited. A wonderful example of this type of reporting is Thomas Orde’s vivid description of the rather unprecedented harsh winter weather in Rome in January 1789, during his return visit to Italy. Frozen fountains, lethal icicles and ice-skating opportunities are just some of the spectacles recorded in his journal.

ZBO IX 1/2/8 Page from Thomas Orde’s travel journal, describing wintry weather conditions in Rome, 1789, with extracts transcribed below:

Thursday 1^st January 1789, Rome: Frost & snow, wind – north. This year has opened with a severity of weather altogether unknown in this country. Not only Soracte [modern Monte Soratte] has been covered, altho it has not for 20 years been whitened more than three times, but the streets of Rome rendered almost impassable by frost & snow.

Saturday 3^rd January: St Peter’s – warm and comfortable within.

Sunday 4^th January: Wind N.W. – Frost & snow. Frost continues, dangerous to walk in the street. Isicles fall – one man killed by one. Skating in the Villa Borghese.

Tuesday 6^th January: Wind N.W. – Frost & snow. Barberini Fountain frozen around the Triton forming a grotto of frozen spray & isicles about him. Ice skating on the pond at the Borghese Villa.

Collections of official records, such as the North Riding Quarter Sessions, can contain references to weather in cases where it has direct bearing on the lives or deaths of those stipulated.  Coroners’ abstracts in the Quarter Sessions’ bundles frequently record verdicts of death due to ‘inclemency of the weather’. Petitions to the Justices of the Peace can include appeals due to weather-related misfortune. Amongst the petitions of 1800, for example, is one from ten Scarborough grocers, asking for relief relating to the loss at sea of consignments of salt from shipwreck of the sloop Friendship during a violent storm on New Year’s Day [QSB 1800 14/2].

QSB 1800 14/2 Signed petition from Scarborough grocers, asking for relief relating to loss of consignments at sea, 14 January 1800

As printed books became more widely available, affordable pocket almanacs enjoyed increasing popularity, with weather predictions being an important feature. Our records show that this feature developed over time, as general interest in weather analysis grew. Monthly weather predictions in 1717, for instance, are quite general and without any scientific basis. Whereas an 1839 publication offers more specific daily predictions – still unscientific but including a blank column for owners to record actual observations, together with barometric readings. Weather forecasting proper did not begin until Admiral Fitzroy issued his storm warnings (based on Atlantic gale mapping) via telegraph for the British coast in 1861.

• Left: ZQG XII 7/25 Pages for April and October from a diary and almanac of 1717, belonging to Thomas Cholmeley
• Right: Z.251 6/5 Cover and inner page of Murphy’s weather almanac of 1839

During the later-19^th-century, weather journals become notably more formal in character, featuring regular barometer and thermometer readings entered in pre-printed columns, in addition to objective weather remarks.  These journals might simply have practical application – charting weather in relation to key farming periods (sowing, harvesting, lambing), but may also reflect the growing interest in charting and analysing weather in the light of exciting contemporary scientific advances in this field.

Z.233/1 Weather records kept in a Barometer book at Arran Villa, Thirsk, 1854-1898

The Shift to Formal Weather Recording & Prediction

Whitby: “Sunday 28^th October 1804 ~ Winds S.S.E. Blows strong with dark & rainy weather. News was of y^e Jane being lost…”   [Daily recordings of wind direction, weather and shipping occurrences, Whitby Association 1804-1806 Z.1090/1]

Nowhere is weather experienced more acutely than at sea. 

In addition to daily weather observations in official ships’ logs, compiled by the Master or Mate, the personal journals of others on-board sailing ships can contain interesting descriptive weather references. One such journal, by Thomas Howe, is tucked in the back of a printed copy of ‘Elements of Navigation’, within the Whitby Museum Manuscripts collection. On his voyage to Madeira in 1772, Howe describes encountering ‘fresh gales and flying clouds’ [ZW IX 3/5]. Written two years later, surgeon Thomas Atkinson’s ‘A Journal of a voyage to Davis’s Straits’ in 1774, on board the Hope of Whitby, is also rich in weather observations [Z.1252/1].

Z.1252/1 Cover and pages 6-7 of ‘A Journal of a Voyage to Davis’s Straits’, 1774

The very real need to offset the risk to loss of life, or of ships and their valuable cargoes during voyages, however, motivated the development of gale and storm prediction during the mid-1800s. This led to the establishment in 1854 of what is now the Met Office and eventually to the issue of Admiral Fitzroy’s first public weather forecast in August 1861.

EF451/038 A shipwreck off the North Yorkshire coast, by George Washington Wilson

As part of this development, the Beaufort Wind Force Scale (0 = calm to 10 = hurricane) was officially adopted in 1838 by the Admiralty, replacing the general and unquantifiable descriptions of wind strength usually found in 18^th century ships’ logs.  The following year, the Admiralty ordered ships’ captains, ports, harbours, and lighthouse keepers to begin recording weather observations – building on some local systems already in operation, like that of Whitby Association at the harbour.

Z.1090/1 Daily recordings of wind direction, weather and shipping occurrences, Whitby Association, 1804-1806.

The types of information to be collected by climatological stations around the country reflect the pioneering work of meteorologists Francis Beaufort, Admiral Robert Fitzroy and James Glaisher (British (Royal) Meteorological Society founder member), amongst others.

The measurements, taken daily, sometimes hourly, include temperature, atmospheric pressure, humidity, wind speed, wind direction and precipitation amount.  Additional climatological and atmospheric features (hail, aurora, rainbows) were also recorded – originally using Beaufort’s notation system (for example f = fog), though later replaced by international non-language-based symbols. Here at the Record Office, we hold the meteorological returns for the weather station at Whitby in the 1880s. Meticulously recorded by lighthouse keeper Edward J.W. Powell, they form part of the Whitby Literary and Philosophical Society records, within the extensive Whitby Museum Manuscripts collection [ZW IV 14/8/3].

ZW IV 14/8/3 Summary of the meteorological records for January to October 1886, observed at the climatological station at Whitby by lighthouse keeper Edward J.W. Powell

ZW IV 14/8/9 Universal weather symbols in The Observer’s Handbook (Met Office), 1911

Voluntary observations from around the country were also encouraged, to be recorded in specially issued pocket record books – like that shown below, completed by D. S Ramsdale in 1923. Returns forwarded to the Meteorological Office were compiled in its Annual Register.

ZW IV 14/8/4 A Pocket Register for climate observations, completed by D. Ramsdale (of the Whitby Literary and Philosophical Society) in 1923

In 1853, John Francis Campbell invented a sunshine recorder which allowed the duration of bright sunshine to be recorded on a daily basis. The scorch marks made by the sun’s rays shining through a glass sphere were originally recorded on the wooden bowl housing the sphere. In 1879, Sir George Gabriel Stokes modified this design to replace the wooden bowl with metal housing incorporating removable shaped recording cards.

ZW IV 14/8/9 A Campbell-Stokes Sunshine Recorder and Scale for measuring the duration of bright sunshine, in The Observer’s Handbook (Met Office), 1911

ZW IV 14/8/5 Sunshine recorder cards for Whitby in 1923. The cards, designed for use in a Campbell-Stokes sunshine recorder, were used to measure the hours of sunshine in a day.

ZW IV 14/8/9 Different card types were used at different times of the year, as described in The Observer’s Handbook (Met Office), 1911

DC/SCB C4/20 A Scarborough District Council plan for a sunshine recorder base

Weather: through an artist’s eye

“I wished you could have been with me…to see the excessively grey distance and brown foreground and wild sky – so like Turner.” [ZCM]

So wrote Herbert C. Herries to his artist relation Henrietta Matilda Crompton in 1857, enthusing about the early morning view from the Chevin ridge, near Otley [collection ZCM].

An unpredictable muse, weather viewed through an artist’s eye is not something to be tolerated or dreaded, but is instead something to marvel at, something inspirational.

SC005229 An etching of the lifeboat disaster during a storm at Scarborough in February 1836

LS16-61 Stormy seas off Filey Brigg, captured by an unknown photographer, 1906

Throughout the 1800s, several landscape artists familiarised themselves with contemporary weather research and analysis to aid their pursuit of naturalistic representation.  J. M. W. Turner, it is known, was inspired by fog, rain and sunlight, and storms at sea.  John Constable was obsessed with cloud forms, keen to achieve true depiction according to accepted scientific classification of the time.

A noteworthy amateur contemporary of these great artists, Henrietta Matilda Crompton of Esholt and Azerley, filled her sketchbooks with landscape watercolours featuring vast, often turbulent skies. Collection ZCM contains sketchbooks of hers covering the early to mid-1800s.

Henrietta’s picturesque style was also influenced and encouraged by her tutors, notable landscape watercolourists David Cox, Copley Fielding and Charles Cope (a friend of Turner’s).  Henrietta also attended Michael Faraday’s popular scientific lectures in 1845 and 1855 and was very likely aware of current artistic trends and influences through frequent contact with her London-based brother-in-law and fellow artist, William Herries.

ZCM High Harrogate, watercolour by Henrietta Matilda Crompton, Sketchbook 1848-49, page 12

ZCM Scarborough, watercolour by Henrietta Matilda Crompton, Sketchbook 1848-49, page 24

Last, but not least, some weather-related items in our collections are just plain fun – like this wonderful postcard in the Norton Conyers archive, amongst the correspondence from Lady Beatrice Graham. Sent to her mother from Munich in 1937, the postcard features a ‘barometer’ Dachshund with a spring tail which wags at different speeds according to the weather!

ZKZ 4/1/10/15 ‘Hunde Barometer!’ postcard, 1937

ZKZ 4/1/10/15 Video of the Hunde Barometer!’ postcard, with wagging tail in action, 1937

Further reading:

Letters and Papers of Henrietta Matilda Crompton and her Family, edited by M.Y. Ashcroft Record Office Publication No.53

The Met Office – Our History webpage