Transcriptions of records carried out by 16,000 volunteers have painted a detailed picture of the weather in the Victorian age.
Launched by the University of Reading during the first Covid-19 lockdown two years ago, the ‘Rainfall Rescue’ project invited volunteers to digitally transcribe 65,000 handwritten rainfall records taken from the Met Office National Meteorological Archive.
The records are based on results from rain gauges across the UK and Ireland, which were taken between 1677 and 1960.
The transcription was expected to take several months, but the volunteers managed to transcribe 5.2 million observations in just 16 days.
On the two-year anniversary of the project launch on 26
March, many of the records have been made publicly available in the Met Office national record, extending it back from 1862 to 1836.
Among other results, the project volunteers found that the driest year on record for the UK was actually 1855, with 786.5 mm (31 inches) of rainfall, surpassing the previous record of 1887 (806 mm).
You can read a scientific paper about the project’s findings at rmets.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/gdj3.157 and view a map of the results at public.flourish.studio/visualisation/5534063.