Papers on meteorology : relating especially to the climate of Britain, and to the variations of the barometer / by Luke Howard.

  • Howard, Luke, 1772-1864.
Date:
1850-1854
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Papers on meteorology : relating especially to the climate of Britain, and to the variations of the barometer / by Luke Howard. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    these also. We are distant 2° of longitude from the nearest part of the salt-water to the westward of us. The next point to be noticed as regards the year is the cold and wet March. When this month is in the cold extreme it is commonly dry, as in 1807 and 1808; but we have here an amount of rain of thrice the average for the month, with a temperature about a degree below the mean proper to it. The rains came with a succession of south-east winds of very steady temperature; and in the neighbour- hood of London I had opportunity to observe that at the vernal equinox the wind put on a decided southerly type, which lasted a full week; but the precipitation it appears took place to the northward. Here again I would remark, that it has hap- pened at different times to me, in passing to and from the south, to observe the bed of the Trent full with abundant rains, while the Thames was not swelled at all, and vice versa, so that the source of the supply differs in these two; and that wind which brings vapour from the sea up one of the estuaries does not necessarily affect the other. To this wet month succeeded two months of extreme dryness and increasing comparative coldness, not without some more genial intervals: indeed, on the 20th of April, I find noted “ a high wind with heavy thunder showers ;” and twice in May, in the first and third weeks, “growing weather;” but on the whole it was now “ a blighting season, with great want of rain.” The June of this year was, with repeated thunder-storms, the wettest in my re- membrance. In 1816, this month had given 4 08 inches to the gauge, with a mean temperature of 59'74°. The Ackworth mean for the present June, (raised l-65° for the difference of latitude,) makes 58°, or 174° colder. July, with a temperature also below the climatic mean, gave about twice the average for the month in rain, which again came in, for the most part, with a south-east wind. In August the rains were frequent and heavy, though the total exceeds the average only by seven tenths of an inch. The temperature was 3° on the cold side of the mean, and the season was ungenial as regards wall-fruit and some other of our domestic products; but in the fields vegetation was now luxuriant, and it might be said emphatically that “ all the trees of the wood rejoiced ” in the exuberant supply. Through September and October the excess of rain continued—always, in the cases where much fell at once, with an easterly wind. The temperature of September was a little cold, that of October in the mean. November was two degrees warm, and the rain exceeded by 50 per cent, the average of even this wettest of all months in the year; such at least it is found by long observation on the east side of the island. The winds from east and south-east continued to be the importers of this prodigious supply of vapour; and the north-west usually manifested itself afterwards c