Extreme weather events in focus: White Christmases
December 11, 2014
Following the first snowfall of the year on Sunday,and the arrival of a ‘weather bomb’ in northern parts of the UK , in my final blog of 2014 I thought I would explore some wintry weather of Decembers past. Data search The TEMPEST database is now up and running and we have been busily entering the …
Sources in focus – Newspaper reports of extreme weather in and around Stornoway and the Western Isles in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries (part 1).
November 28, 2014
Sources in focus – Newspaper reports of extreme weather in and around Stornoway and the Western Isles in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries (part 1). Since the project started in December 2013, blogs have highlighted several categories of historical sources which can provide evidence of past extreme weather events, for example, diaries and parish registers. In …
‘Foaming rivers of snow’ and lost sovereigns: sampling William Parsons’ diaries
November 18, 2014
In the previous blog post, Lucy highlighted the value of diaries in our extreme weather research and pointed to the richness of these sources, whether they were produced specifically as weather diaries or as more general records of everyday events and activities in which weather features. In both cases, compilation demanded quite a particular kind …
Sources in focus: Diaries
October 31, 2014
Knee-deep in diaries Many of the documents that we’ve been consulting in the archives over the last few months have been diaries, indeed Marie-Jeanne recently said that she was “knee-deep in diaries”, a feeling that I can empathise with! Some are meteorological registers – diaries specifically of the weather – but many are diaries that …
The Prediction Machine
October 18, 2014
Last week the Environment and Society research group in the School of Geography was treated to a seminar by artist and researcher Rachel Jacobs. Rachel mainly talked about her most recent commission that came from Radar Loughborough University Arts with support from the Geography Department at Loughborough University – ‘The Prediction Machine’. Rachel was one of …
Extreme weather events in focus: Aurora borealis
October 10, 2014
Aurora borealis from the UK Following recent sightings of the aurora borealis from the UK, in this week’s blog I thought I would share some of the parallel appearances they have made in some archival materials that I’ve been looking at. In putting the post together I’ve been able to utilise the summary reporting tools that Richard …
Seashells, pirates and Mr William Bulkeley’s Diaries
September 29, 2014
William Bulkeley day On the 19th and 20th of September, we had the privilege of being asked to participate in the events surrounding the launch of the online digital versions of the diaries of Mr William Bulkeley (held at Bangor University Archives). The diaries represent an important source on the social history of Anglesey during …
Getting into the archive – Weather and the Great Estate: the recording of rainfall at Chatsworth House, Derbyshire, 1760 to the Present
September 5, 2014
Agricultural societies, farmers clubs and contemporary literature in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, agriculturalists, landowners and farmers in Britain were increasingly literate and open to new ideas, leading to the growth in the number of farming books and the establishment of agricultural periodicals. Literature concerning agriculture and rural life …
Getting into the archive: Lincolnshire and Matthew Flinders’ diaries
Lincolnshire Archives This week I started my work at Lincolnshire Archives. I had a really successful day, completing work on all of the documents I had requested ahead of my visit (a rarity!). The first documents I looked at were the diaries of Matthew Flinders, 2 volumes, dating from 1775-1784 and 1785-1802. These were a …
Getting into the archive: Sherwood Forest and the ‘hurricane’ of 1714
August 22, 2014
Storms and tree damage Damage to trees is one of the more common impacts of storms recorded in the documentary record. The loss of trees is a very visible sign of an extreme weather event that can cause significant changes to the landscape in a short space of time – a number of trees were …
Recent Comments