Weather Extremes: Making and Breaking Records in Nottinghamshire
December 16, 2016
Over the last few months Georgina and I have been working closely with staff at the Department of Manuscripts, University of Nottingham, to curate a public exhibition for the Weston Gallery, Lakeside Arts, on the University campus. It opens today. Last night we held a private view that was opened by BBC meteorologist Helen Willetts, …
School log books as a source for investigating extreme weather events in the Western Isles during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
August 24, 2015
School Log Books The main historical source material being consulted for the north-west Scotland case study are school log books, the keeping of which became compulsory after The Education (Scotland) Act of 1872 which sought to standardise education through the establishment of school boards in a region that was predominantly Gaelic speaking and where education …
‘The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides!’
June 15, 2015
Following in the footsteps of Martin Martin (-1718), Thomas Pennant (1726-98), James Boswell (1740-95) and Samuel Johnson (1709-84), Neil Macdonald (who could almost be mistaken for being a native islander given his surname), Simon Naylor (a Cornish Glaswegian) and James Bowen (a regular tourist to the islands), travelled to the remote Outer Hebrides, to undertake …
Edward Joseph Lowe and extreme weather observations
June 4, 2015
This week I thought I would write about a weather observer from Nottingham who completed much of his work just a couple of minutes walk from my office. Edward Joseph Lowe (1825-1900) was born in Highfield House, University Park, now home to the Centre for Advanced Studies of the University of Nottingham. He is probably most …
Franco-British collaboration, the Royal Society and Measuring Storms
April 28, 2015
Care for the Future – LABEX Last week Georgina and I represented the Weather Extremes team at the 2nd AHRC Care for the Future and LABEX joint workshop. More information on the partnership can be found in my post on the first workshop. This time the meeting was held at the Royal Society in London, …
Marking 200 years since the ‘super’ eruption of Tambora
April 1, 2015
5-11th April 1815 Next week I’m fortunate to be attending the International Conference on Volcanoes, Climate and Society at the University of Bern, Switzerland. The purpose of the conference is to mark 200 years since the eruption of the Tambora volcano, on the Indonesian island of Sumbawa, between 5-11th April 1815. The eruption is one of …
Looking ahead to the solar eclipse (and back to the archives)
March 19, 2015
20th March 2015 Tomorrow morning, across much of the UK, we’ll have the rare opportunity to witness a solar eclipse. For around 7 minutes (around 9:30am in the Nottingham area), up to 98% of the sun will be obscured by the moon. If you’re in the Faroe Islands you might be lucky enough to witness …
Sources in focus – Newspaper reports of extreme weather in the Western Isles in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries (part 2).
February 10, 2015
Sources in focus – Newspaper reports of extreme weather in the Western Isles in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries (part 2). ‘Sources in focus – Newspaper reports of extreme weather in the Western Isles in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries’ part 1 (https://blogs.nottingham.ac.uk/weatherextremes/2014/11/28/sources-in-focus-newspaper-reports-of-extreme-weather-in-the-western-isles-in-the-nineteenth-and-twentieth-centuries-part-1/) explored the impact of extreme weather on ferries and shipping. Following on …
Cold weather records: reflections from the bus stop
January 19, 2015
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 …
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 …
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