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Posts by Georgina

Widespread flooding and the centrality of ‘community’ response

The scale of loss and destruction wrought by the recent flooding across the north of England has been sobering.  Communities in Cumbria, Lancashire, Greater Manchester and Yorkshire have all been, and continue to be affected. Amid threats of renewed floods with the imminent passage of ‘Storm Frank’- headline news at the time of writing- weather …

The trouble with wind….

Britain’s windiest year? 2015 is on course to be the windiest year that Britain has experienced for two decades. Since the start of May there have been just eight days described as calm (ie highest wind is measured at less than 11mph) by the Met Office. Some places in the UK are obviously windier than others …

Cold weather records: reflections from the bus stop

As I was waiting for the campus hopper this morning my fingers were steadily growing numb. The texts and emails I sent from my mobile were even more laden with errors and typos than normal, as button pressing became increasingly challenging. It was most definitely cold. There is no snow on the ground here in …

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‘Foaming rivers of snow’ and lost sovereigns: sampling William Parsons’ diaries

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 …

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Getting into the archive: John Harrison’s notebook

  Meteorological phenomena were understood and comprehended differently at different points in time. In the early modern period, for example, detailed descriptions of violent storms, unusual displays of the northern lights, the shape of hailstones, or extremes of cold, heat, flooding or drought, especially in as much as such events disrupted normal everyday life, were …

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Now we are six (months old)

We are now six months into our research project and realising the scale of the undertaking we have set ourselves. At our recent team meeting, fueled by Lucy’s lemon cake and with the splendid panorama of the Liverpool skyline as a backdrop, we spent two days reporting on activities, discussing our progress and our strategy …

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Getting into the archive – Pies, snowball fights and blazing chimney pots? Must be the diary of a Victorian lady

Elizabeth Nutt Harwood I spent a fulfilling day in Nottinghamshire Archives last week. Among the documents I requested was the diary of one Elizabeth Nutt Harwood of Beeston Meadow, Nottinghamshire. This covers a period from 1838 to 1842 and is rich in detail about the daily life of this educated young woman and her well …

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Introducing our new British Weather Extremes project

Extreme weather in the news (again) In the past couple of months, the British weather has once again hit the headlines. Communities across the UK have been battered by storms, gales and floods, bringing down trees, causing significant property damage, devastating iconic sea fronts and contributing to travel chaos. This week we have also seen …

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