Pleasant Ways in Science

by Richard A. Proctor

For the winter of 1769–70 we have October frosty, the next fortnight rainy, the next dry and frosty. December windy, with rain and intervals of frost (the first fortnight very foggy); the first half of January frosty, thence to the end of February mild hazy weather. March frosty and brighter.

For 1770–71, from the middle of October to the end of the year, almost incessant rains; January severe frosts till the last week, the next fortnight rain and snow, and spring weather to the end of February. March frosty.

For 1771–72, October rainy, November frost with intervals of fog and rain, December bright mild weather with hoar frosts; then six weeks of frost and snow, followed by six of frost, sleet, hail, and snow.

For 1772–73, October, November, and to December 22, rain, with mild weather; to the end of 1772, cold foggy weather; then a week of frost, followed by three of dark rainy weather. First fortnight of February frost; thence to the end of March misty showery weather.

Passing over the winter of 1773–74, which was half rainy, half frosty, what could more closely resemble the winter weather we have had so much of during the last few years, than that experienced in the winter of 1774–75? From August 24 to the third week of November, there was rain, with frequent intervals of sunny weather; to the end of December, dark dripping fogs; to the end of the first fortnight in March, rain almost every day.

And so on, with no remarkable changes, until the year 1792, the last of Gilbert White’s records.

If we limit our attention to any given month of winter, we find the same mixture of cold and dry with wet and open weather as we are familiar with at present. Take, for instance, the month usually the most wintry of all, viz., January. Passing over the years already considered, we have January, 1776, dark and frosty with much snow till the 26th (at this time the Thames was frozen over), then foggy with hoar frost; January, 1777, frosty till the 10th, then foggy and showery; 1778, frosty till the 13th, then rainy to the 24th, then hard frost; 1779, frost and showers throughout January; 1780, frost throughout; 1781, frost and snow to the 25th, then rain and snow; 1782, open and mild; 1783, rainy with heavy winds; 1784, hard frost; 1785, a thaw on the 2nd, then rainy weather to the 28th, the rest of the month frosty; 1786, frost and snow till January 7, then a week mild with much rain, the next week heavy snow, and the rest mild with frequent rain; 1787, first twenty-four days dark moist mild weather, then four days frost, the rest mild and showery; 1788, thirteen days mild and wet, five days of frost, and from January 18 to the end of the month dry windy weather; 1789, thirteen days hard frost, the rest of the month mild with showers; 1790, sixteen days of mild foggy weather with occasional rain, to the 21st frost, to the 28th dark with driving rains, and the rest mild dry weather; 1791, the whole of January mild with heavy rains; and lastly 1792, “some hard frost in January, but mostly wet and mild.”

There is nothing certainly in this record to suggest that any material change has taken place in our January weather during the last eight years. And if we had given the record of the entire winter for each of the years above dealt with the result would have been the same.

We have, in fact, very striking evidence in Gilbert White’s account of the cold weather of December, 1784, which he specially describes as “very extraordinary,” to show that neither our severe nor our average winter weather can differ materially from that which people experienced in the eighteenth century. “In the evening of December 9,” he says, “the air began to be so very sharp that we thought it would be curious to attend to the motions of a thermometer; we therefore hung out two, one made by Martin and one by Dolland” (sic, presumably Dollond), “which soon began to show us what we were to expect; for by ten o’clock they fell to twenty-one, and at eleven to four, when we went to bed. On the 10th, in the morning the quicksilver in Dolland’s glass was down to half a degree below zero, and that of Martin’s, which was absurdly graduated only to four degrees above zero, sank quite into the brass guard of the ball, so that when the weather became most interesting this was useless. On the 10th, at eleven at night, though the air was perfectly still, Dolland’s glass went down to one degree below zero!” The note of exclamation is White’s. He goes on to speak of “this strange severity of the weather,” which was not exceeded that winter, or at any time during the twenty-four years of White’s observations. Within the last quarter of a century, the thermometer, on more than one occasion, has shown two or three degrees below zero. Certainly the winters cannot be supposed to have been ordinarily severer than ours in the latter half of the last century, when we find that thermometers, by well-known instrument makers, were so constructed as to indicate no lower temperature than four degrees above zero.

Let us return, after this somewhat long digression, to the levelling action of rain and rivers.