22 January 2015

Historic British Weather Information

The February issue of Family Tree Magazine (UK version) is out. Scanning the contents my eye was drawn to an article by David Norris, a frequent contributor to Internet Genealogy, Whatever the Weather. He mentions sources for weather data for various counties, for Britain it's pdf copies of the Monthly Weather Report from 1884 to 1993 at http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/archive/monthly-weather-report. It's interesting, a one page summary of conditions for the month, but I wanted more.

I lucked out at http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/archive/uk-daily-weather-report, a work in progress. For the years of the two world wars they have data recorded at weather observing stations scattered across the country. Only 15 km from my birthplace and on that day there were observations at 6 hourly intervals of atmospheric pressure, pressure trend, temperature, dew point, predominant weather, visibility, cloud information, etc. There are also weather maps.

If your period of interest isn't online you can contact the Met Office library at metlib@metoffice.gov.uk .

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