Ruth A Symes explains how you can find out how the weather affected your ancestors’ lives

On Thursday 15 July 1762, alongside the usual records of births, marriages and deaths, a rector in Norfolk noted in his parish register that “there happened a most violent storm of thunder, lightning, hail and rain, the violence of which resulted in the roof of Billockby parish church falling in, broking [sic] down the seats and causing great damage to the pulpit and desk”.

Entries of this kind are pretty common in parish registers although they were not required by the authorities. And, while not a comprehensive record of weather in the past, they do show how central concerns about the weather were to the communities in which our ancestors lived. Vicars tended to record events that particularly affected their immediate locality and the church itself, so there are, for example, many accounts of churchyards being so hard and frozen that graves couldn’t be dug. Such parochial accounts of the weather can not be searched for on indexes, but if you have the chance to read the original parish registers online or in a county record office, you might potentially find mentions of local shipwrecks, poor harvests, and food shortages – consequences of dramatic weather events. All of these might have shaped the lives of your forebears.

Our ancestors were as interested in the weather as we are – indeed, in the absence of central heating, air conditioning and motorised vehicles, they no doubt paid more attention to it than we do. Average temperatures and rainfall determined everything from the kinds of homes in which they lived, the work they did, the food they ate, the transportation they used and the clothing they favoured. Climate will also have played a part in many of the life events and life decisions that turn up in family history records. You might want to find out what the weather was like on the day your ancestors were married, or ascertain whether the bronchitis from which they died was brought on by a cold spell. You might be interested in what motivated them to move to a different county or country, or want to know more about the weather conditions as they made long voyages of emigration or transportation.

So how can you find out more? Happily, the resources for historic weather are plentiful.

Searching Newspapers

First, historic newspapers can now be searched (many of them freely) via the British Newspaper Archive (britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk). Newspapers often gave a brief description of the weather over the past 24 hours or previous week. At special times, a detailed account of weather conditions over a period of time might be given as is the case in the Carlisle Journal on 23 November 1811 where a table of pressure, windspeeds and temperatures taken over the previous three weeks at Dumfries was included in the paper around the time of the appearance of a comet. Other newspaper accounts present the human angle: on 12 August 1896, for example, the Northern Daily Telegraph commented that, “No fewer than 86 degrees [F] were registered in the shade, and during the afternoon, numerous cases of sunstroke were treated at the various Metropolitan hospitals and other institutions.” In the Victorian era, printed almanacs were purchased and pored over by all social classes. These quirky little books – available from at least the 17th century – occupied an odd place between superstition and science. It was widely believed that the weather for a whole year could be predicted from the movements of the tide, the moon and the planets. The kind of almanacs that might turn up today in antiquarian bookshops and archives include calendars, meteorological information, astronomical positions and prophecy alongside space for diary entries.

Our 19th and early 20th century ancestors were kept entertained by the increasing variety and affordability of apparatus for calibrating the weather including temperature gauges, barometers and rain gauges. Some enthusiasts became so adept at recording weather features that their diaries actually became the starting point for some aspects of modern meteorological enquiry. The observations of Francis Beaufort (1774–1857), for example, became the basis for the Beaufort Scale, which describes wind intensity based on observed sea conditions.

Additionally, ordinary people frequently made ad-hoc mention of the weather in diaries and letters. For example, the published diary of the Rev Kilvert of Herefordshire records that in chapel on Sunday 13 February 1870 his “beard, moustaches and whiskers were so stiff with ice that I could barely open my mouth and my beard was frozen on to my mackintosh”. Worse still, he had to baptise a baby in a font in which ice was floating.

An ancestor’s diary might turn up in family papers. Alternatively, county record offices searched via the catalogue of The National Archives at Kew, available at discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk, may yield material written by people who lived in the same locality as your ancestor at the same time. A writer’s diary entries on the weather might also reveal something of his or her religious beliefs. Was a thunderbolt considered a message from an angry God, for example? Or was it purely seen in scientific terms? If a diarist tends to focus on only the gloomiest or the sunniest aspects of the weather, then you might also start to speculate on his or her temperament!

Extreme Weather

From storms to droughts, we reveal the weather from the past 600 years that our families remembered for generations

1444
London’s St Paul’s Cathedral is hit by lightning on 1 February during a terrible storm, and the steeple is set on fire. A lightning strike destroys the replacement spire in 1561.

1607
The Thames freezes over during the particularly cold winter of 1607/1608, and a ‘frost fair’ is held upon the ice.

1703
A Great Storm causes devastation in central and southern England on 26 November. For the first time, printed news bulletins about casualties are sold all over England.

1708
The Great Frost, or Le Grand Hiver as it was known in France, makes the winter of 1708/1709 the coldest in Europe for 500 years.

1786
On 14–15 September a storm destroys houses, tears up trees, overturns wagons and coaches, and kills many people. The Midlands is worst hit.

1815
A climate crisis brought on by the eruption of the volcano Mount Tambora in Indonesia causes the destruction of crops and food shortages across Europe and North America.

1839
The so-called Big Wind – a European windstorm – sweeps across Ireland and western England on 6 January, wreaking havoc and causing many deaths.

1858
A heatwave begins in Central London in June, exacerbating the decomposition of rubbish in streets and the Thames leading to the ‘Great Stink’ and outbreaks of fatal diseases.

1953
Wind, high tide and low pressure cause the North Sea to flood land up to 18 feet above mean sea level on Britain’s east coast on 31 January.

1976
A heatwave in the British Isles, which is especially severe in south-west England, lasts from 23 June until 27 August, and leads to drought and food shortages.

Advances In Meteorology

A growing interest in science during the Victorian period (boosted by the foundation of the Meteorological Office in 1854) means that more official and scientific weather records began to be kept by emergent weather stations, and observatories on land and at sea from the mid-19th century onwards. This means that all of the major UK weather events, including the harsh winters of 1947 and 1963, the drought of 1976 and the Great Storm of 1987, have left their imprint in numbers (temperature, air pressure and rainfall figures) as well as in memories and adhoc written accounts.

Until the 1960s, however, all of this information was written on paper and left gathering dust in archives. Thankfully, since then scientists have realised the data’s importance and have begun the process of scanning, transcribing and analysing it, as well as publishing it online.

For example, you can freely search historical weather data from the current 37 weather stations around the British Isles at the Met Office’s site: tinyurl. com/weather-stations.

The ACRE Initiative

How researchers across the globe are revealing the climate information hidden in old records

Prof Rob Allan was born in Adelaide, South Australia, in 1954 and studied at the University of Adelaide. He worked for the then Atmospheric Division of the Australian government’s Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) between 1990 and 2000 before moving to the Met Office in the UK. Allan now holds adjunct and honorary professorships with the University of Exeter and the University of South Queensland.

Allan developed the ‘Atmospheric Circulation Reconstructions Over the Earth’ initiative in 2007. ACRE (met-acre.net) is led by a consortium of nine partners including the University of Southern Queensland, the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the University of Bern in Switzerland, the University of Giessen in Germany, the University of Sussex, the Met Office Hadley Centre and the British Library, and sees researchers around the world cooperate on a number of projects aimed at recovering and sharing the information about the climate that is locked away in historical records. This includes digitising terrestrial and marine weather observations from weather stations, lighthouses, ships etc going back 250 years. The information is then added to two databases and used to create weather maps matching the quality of the ones seen in modern TV forecasts and extending back into the 19th century.

Allan is also fascinated by genealogy. He began helping his mother with her family history in the early 1980s. Today he has more than 48,000 people in the combined family trees of both his parents.

Citizen Science

In addition, several interesting weather-related ‘citizen science’ projects are being undertaken under the umbrella of the ‘Atmospheric Circulation Reconstructions Over the Earth’ initiative (see box, page 29). Volunteers have offered their services in transcribing historical weather data to make it available to everyone, and more are always welcome. One example is the Tempest Project (nottingham.ac.uk/geography/extreme-weather/search), a freely available database about extreme weath er events using info rmation that has been extracted fro m archival records including letters, diaries, church records, school logbooks, newspaper articles and photos. Entries span 500 years and relate the UK (and Ireland), to places across but are focused on five casestudy regions: central England, south-west England, East Anglia, Wales and north-west Scotland. Details of the original documents, their authors, and the collections and repositories in which they are held are included as well.

Another project, Old Weather (oldweather.org), is recovering worldwide weather observations made in ships’ logs since the 19th century, including from the US Navy during the Second World War. Fascinating information about the project is available online, and searchable results will be available in time.

Also, Rainfall Rescue (zenodo.org/record/5770389) has made available over 3.3 million monthly rainfall amounts. The data was recorded at thousands of sites across the UK and Ireland between 1677 and 1960. On the 66,000 scanned sheets of paper are the rainfall measurements, as well as the observer’s name and location, which helps link the measurements to individual people. Census information has been used to identify the precise sites where the observations were taken, including private houses.

Weather Sources

There’s a Vast Range of sources to learn about historic weather

Almanacs

Many almanacs are now available for free online, for example via the Wellcome Collection’s website at tinyurl.com/well-almanacs. They only predicted weather though.

Newspapers

Search the British Newspaper Archive (britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk) for weather reports as well as longer articles recording the results of storm damage and heatwaves.

Ships’ Logs

The Log of Logs (tinyurl.com/zenodolog-of-logs) is a free online source with weather conditions for ships travelling into Australian and New Zealand waters (1788–1990).

Tides And Waves

The UK Hydrographic Office in Taunton has hundreds of thousands of hydrographic and navigational documents, such as Royal Navy remarks books (gov.uk/guidance/theukho-archive).

Worldwide Weather

The International Data Rescue (I-DARE) Portal at idare-portal.org covers the many projects worldwide that are collating the weather data that is locked away in historical records, and explains how you can get involved yourself.

Logbooks

The National Meteorological Library and Archive in Exeter (tinyurl.com/nat-met-lib) has weather diaries back to the early 18th century and marine weather logbooks.

Parish Registers

These might include details of the weather, particularly extremes, recorded by the local incumbent. Browse online registers for comments in the margins or at the front or back of the register.

Storms

The Tempest Project is a free database about extreme weather in the UK over the past 500 years using information from archival records: nottingham.ac.uk/geography/extremeweather/search.

Weather Stations

You can view such data as temperature, air pressure and rainfall for UK weather stations back to 1961 on the Met Office’s site at tinyurl.com/weather-stations.

Rainfall Rescue has made available over 3.3 million rainfall amounts

Weather Rescue at Sea (weatherrescue.org) looks at data from ship weather logbooks during the 1860s. Previous Weather Rescue projects recovered hourly observations taken on the summit of Ben Nevis and in the town of Fort William between 1883 and 1904, and also observations from the UK, Ireland and mainland Europe recorded in the Met Office’s Daily Weather Report from 1861 to 1874. The latter was created by Vice Admiral Robert FitzRoy (former captain of HMS Beagle) who had sent weather-measurement instruments to various UK locations, so that it could be continuously monitored for the purpose of providing storm warnings to sailors. Each morning the observations were sent by telegraph to London where he used them to make the very first storm warnings. By August 1861 these had become general weather ‘forecasts’ –a word he invented. Volunteers have transcribed the pressure, temperature and rainfall observations in the scanned original documents, and they are gradually being made available at tinyurl.com/weather-rescue.

The final two projects we’re highlighting will be of particular interest if you have Australian ancestors. The Female Convicts Research Centre in South Hobart, Tasmania, has transcribed weather records relating to 160 ships transporting 13,500 women to the island between 1803 and 1853 (https://www.femaleconvicts. org.au/index.php/database/databaseresearch). To access the database you need to register as a guest researcher, which is free. And the Log of Logs (tinyurl.com/zenodolog-of-logs) is a freely searchable source detailing the weather conditions for ships that travelled into Australian and New Zealand waters between 1788 and 1990, including convict ships.

Ruth A Symes is a writer and historian. Her books include Tracing Your Ancestors Through Letters and Personal Writings (Pen and Sword, 2016)

Photos: GETTY IMAGES, ALAMY, BRITISH LIBRARY