Tag Archives: Plaistow

1816: The Year Without a Summer, History, London fogs, UK earthquakes, UK meteors, Weather

1816: the year without a summer in London

November 12, 2015 wansteadmeteo 11 Comments

Tornadoes, earthquakes, heavy rainfall, abnormally low temperatures, pea-souper fogs and exploding meteors are phenomena that marked the Year Without a Summer around the world 200 years ago. But how did London fair?

1816 & 2015 monthly anomalies — The monthly anomalies of the two years closely follow the same pattern between March and August

When extreme weather affects Britain, such as the floods plaguing northern England and Scotland, conditions in the capital are benign by comparison.

There is not a great deal written in the press about the weather in London in 1816. So, as ever, Luke Howard’s The Climate of London, is a primary reference point.

After a wild end to 1815 that was marked with snow and lightning 1816 started dry, cold and frosty. Though cold by today’s standards January 1816 was fairly average and much warmer than the previous two when the last Thames frost fair was held.

annual — The highs and lows of 1816 and 2015 compared

Though the temperature reached 10C on 10th the rest of the month was marked with maxima around 6C and the odd frosty night.

Cold weather returned at the end of the month, turning severe in the second week of February. In the early hours of the 7th heavy snow, driven by gale-force north-easterly winds, brought possibly some of the worst winter weather this area has ever seen. Some 35mm of precipitation is recorded on the 8th – this would normally give at least one foot of level snow that could obviously be whipped up into huge drifts.

Luke Howard described the scene in his diary entry saying the abundance of snow “loaded the trees to their tops and weighed down the smaller shrubs to the ground.”

The snow and polar continental air also produced perfect conditions for a textbook radiative cooling night. The minimum recorded on the 10th: -20.6C has not, as far as I can tell, been repeated since.

To put that into perspective the lowest minimum of the severe winter of 1963 for this area was -12.2C recorded at Greenwich on January 21st. The coldest night I have personally recorded was -10.3C on January 12th 1987.

As often happens with severe cold snaps Howard reported on the 17th the the snow “was mostly gone but very thick ice remains on ponds”; a period of just under a week.

The cold snap saw the mean temperature for February over three degrees colder than average at 0.8C.

As well as keeping meticulous observations in Plaistow, Stratford and Tottenham, Howard always kept an eye on what was going on abroad and noted that earthquake activity was high.

On February 2nd an earthquake that ‘lasted nearly three minutes’ was felt at Lisbon. Three days later an earthquake was felt on Madeira.

“At midnight a severe shock of an earthquake was felt all over the island and the following morning at 4 o’clock another shock was felt.”

An extract of a letter from Captain Welsh of the Claudine described an event of an earthquake felt at sea on the 9th.

On the 9th of February off St Michael’s we experienced very tempestuous weather with a tremendous confused sea. The wind shifting from SW to SE and NE with constant lightning and heavy rain. On the 10th at 8.30pm, the ship then under reefed fore sail and mainstay sail, we were much alarmed by a severe shock of an earthquake which lasted four or five seconds.

east london wind data — The dominant wind direction in 1816 was north-west

Later in the month on 23rd it was reported that the snow in the Grampian hills was at its greatest depth for 20 years.

Howard reported a heavy short snowstorm in the capital on March 4th. He also mentions another earthquake on March 17th that affected the north of England in towns and cities including Doncaster, Bawtry, Blyth, Carlton, Worksop, Sheffield, Chesterfield, Mansfield, Nottingham, Lincoln and Gainsborough.

“A smart shock of an earthquake was perceptibly felt in Lincoln at about 12.50pm. The undulation appeared to be from west to east and lasted from about a minute and a half to two minutes.

“Pictures and other articles hanging on the walls were set in a swinging motion. At Newark also and the neighbouring villages the shock was distinctly felt as well as at Leicester and Loughborough.”

Snowy episodes in the capital lasted well into April. On 12th snow fell for two hours “turning the high ground of Hampstead in the distance white”.

Very high tides were reported on the 15th with “much water out in the marshes”. By the 19th it was noted that the growing season was being severely hampered by the cold weather

April 1816 was nearly 1.5C below average. Despite this, by the 21st, the first swallows began to appear.

May and June were again cold. More than twice the average rainfall in June suggests the weather in the sixth month was very disturbed.

On the 25th a tornado, strong enough to carry objects weighing 60lbs, was reported in the Edgware Road area.

At two o’clock being a still sultry day a whirlwind passed over the nursery ground of Mr Henderson in the Edgware Road which lifted seven lights from the greenhouses and carried them to the height of the highest elm trees, each of the lights weighs 50 or 60lbs at least. At the same time two garden mats were carried to an immense height so that the eye could not distinguish them.

The following day “extremely heavy and prolonged rain from 9am (26th) to 9am on 27th gave 2.95 inches”. This total of over 52mm is notably high though not a record.

Overseas, meanwhile, the weather continued to confound observers. Several inches of snow fell in Quebec on June 8th while a letter from a friend of Howard mentioned a reading of -38F that had been recorded in New Hampshire earlier in the season.

July and August were similarly cold and wet. While events in London had quietened down Howard noted that the Kendal Chronicle was reporting snow on the summit of Helvellyn on July 4th while notable gales in Scotland were affecting ships.

More earthquakes shook locations around the world including one on August 14th in Scotland that caused panic and considerable damage in Inverness. Howard quotes a letter from north of the border:

“Last night, exactly a quarter before 11 o’clock the town of Inverness and the surrounding country was fearfully shook by an earthquake. We fled to the street where we found almost every inhabitant; women and children screaming and a very considerable portion of them naked. Many fled to the fields and there remained for the greater part of the night. Chimney tops were thrown down or damaged in every quarter of the town. The Mason Lodge occupied as an hotel was rent from top to bottom, the north sulk of the chimney partly thrown down one of the coping stones weighing, I should think, from 50lb to 60lb, was thrown to the other side of the street a distance not less than 60 feet.”

Though it is known as the Year without a Summer 1816 was actually only the 8th coolest summer in the local series going back to 1797. There were also 21 wetter summers – the 250mm that fell was actually less than half the rainfall of summer 1960.

1816 & 2015 monthly rainfall anomalies — 1816 & 2015 compared: monthly rainfall anomalies

A change of month in September failed to bring a change in the weather and the mean temperature continued 2C below the average for the period. Howard mentions a 9-week tour of Europe at this time – his laboratory and climate reading duties left in the hands of his friend and partner, John Gibson.

Howard’s account of his tour explains how excessive summer rains had made life difficult from Amsterdam to Geneva.

“From the sources of the Rhine among the Alps to its embouchure in the German ocean and through a space twice or thrice as broad from east to west the whole season presented a series of storms and inundations. Not meadows and villages alone but portions of cities and large towns lay long underwater; dikes were broken, bridges blown up, the crops spoiled or carried off by torrents and the vintage ruined by the want of sun to bring out and ripen the fruit.

“While the middle of Europe was thus suffering from wet, the north for a time and to a certain extent was parched with drought and public prayers appear to have been ordered about the same time at Riga for rain and at Paris for sunshine.”

On September 16th Howard noted that a ‘dreadful’ hurricane had affected the Caribbean island of Guadalope. “Houses were levelled, plantations destroyed and the soil driven about like dust in a whirlwind.”

October 1816 was a blip during 1816 in that the mean temperature and rainfall were about average though Howard’s records reveal there were four air frosts.

By November the weather began mild but by the 6th the cold had returned with a brief snowy snap. A report from Chester said that day was almost night because of the thickness of the cloud:

“Candles or lamps were obliged to be lighted in all the houses this was succeeded by a slight shower. On Thursday successive falls of hail and rain took place. On Friday the frost was uncommonly severe and on Sunday the snow which fell was above 2ft deep in the streets.”

On the 14th reports came from France that a tempest on the night of the 11th and 12th had wrecked many ships: “winds blowing from the north then SSE”.

Chesterton House Balaam Street Plaistow C London Borough of Newham — Chesterton House, off Balaam Street, Plaistow, was the home of Luke Howard from 1806-13. The building has since been demolished

A solar eclipse on the 18th was followed by a sustained build in pressure from the 22nd with fog now becoming a problem in the capital.

The Evening Mail on November 27th reported that the problem was particularly acute in South London.

“The atmosphere was so darkened yesterday morning in the vicinity of the metropolis by the thick fog combined with smoke that in some parts it appeared like a cloudy night. In the neighbourhood of Walworth and Camberwell it was so completely dark that some of the coachmen driving stages were obliged to get down and lead their horses with a lantern.”

After the average October November had reverted to type and the month in London finished just over 3C cooler than average.

Pressure began to fall with the arrival of December. On the 12th reports of a meteor were made from Glasgow and Perth. The phenomena sounded spectacular:

“The meteor made its appearance in the SW in the form of a small star and gradually increased in magnitude till it reached the zenith when it subtended an angle nearly equal to that of the full moon. In shape it resembled a paper kite. After passing the zenith it again seemed to diminish in size owing no doubt to its gradually receding from the observer till its altitude was equal to about 30 miles when it exploded like a sky rocket. The report of the explosion, which is described as more tremendous than the noise of the loudest thunder, reached the ear about three minutes after the meteor vanished so that it could not be less than 40 miles distant and probably about 27 miles above the surface of the earth. From the various particulars collected its diameter must have been about 240 yards. The light which it yielded was very considerable being sufficient to render the smallest objects visible.”

Two days later the air pressure fell to its lowest point that year: 966.1mb. In the early hours of the 15th Howard wrote of an earth tremor that lasted 15 seconds.

A brief cold snap arrived on the 19th with the temperature falling to -10C on 21st – by the 26th, however, the temperature reached 10C.

Though December was relatively milder than November the month still finished 1.5C below average with 1.5 times average rain.

East London Maxima (1816 & 2015) — 1816 & 2015 compared: East London maxima

1816 & 2015 compared: East london minima

Enter 1816 & 2015 compared: East London rainfall

art, Clouds, History, Weather

How the cloud man inspired Constable

September 17, 2014 wansteadmeteo 1 Comment

It has been a superb year for cloud formations and cloudscapes. Spectacular towering cumulo-nimbus and deep-red sunsets have been more frequent than average in 2014. I can’t remember a week when I haven’t aimed the camera skywards to record the latest phenomena.

Distant rain cloud looking east on Wanstead Flats

The skies at the end of the 18th century were even more spectacular, thanks to a period of heightened volcanic activity, and captured the imagination of a boy whose work in later life would inspire one of Britain’s great landscape painters: John Constable.

Before the 19th century meteorologists thought of clouds as unique and transient and therefore unclassifiable. This changed when Luke Howard, who once lived in Plaistow, presented his Essay on the Modification of Clouds to the Askesian Society in the winter 1802/03.

The impact of the lecture was immense, and catapulted the subject of cloud formation as a serious scientific study. The cloud types: cumulus, Latin for ‘heap’; stratus, Latin for ‘layer’, and cirrus, Latin for ‘curl of hair’ are words still used today.

Although by trade Howard was a chemist, his pharmaceutical chemical factory located nearby on the banks of the River Lea, his passion was meteorology. His pioneering observations recorded in three volumes of The Climate of London provide a fascinating insight into this area’s weather all those years ago.

Following his presentation on Clouds Howard’s standing among the science community became more and more elevated. He presented seven Lectures in Meteorology in 1817. Within a year Constable, who was four years younger than Howard, made a decision to start painting six-foot landscapes which marked a significant turning point in his career. The son of a landowner Constable had a keen understanding of the weather from his time spent as an apprentice windmiller in his native Suffolk.

Historians of art and science have argued that Constable probably attended Howard’s fashionable lectures which were complemented by a number of watercolour illustrations for his classification method.

Although it could be argued that artists such as Gainsborough painted clouds decades previously it was Constable, his search for truth in painting nature leading him to Howard’s work on clouds, who took the art to another level.

The artist adapted Howard’s scientific observations of these transient phenomena with an artist’s eye. A popular method of the period was the use of the rapid oil sketch out in the field. Constable then used these sketches to help him bring to life the drama and emotional content of a scene for his larger set-piece paintings.

Constable completed and submitted to the Royal Academy The Hay Wain, arguably his best-known masterpiece, in 1821 – the same year that Howard was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society.

Many more paintings and sketches followed of landscapes around Suffolk, Hampstead Heath and Salisbury and the achievements of both men in their chosen fields continued. Howard in business and his beloved meteorology, publishing a third volume of The Climate of London in 1833 – among the first studies that recognised the urban heat island effect. His Seven Lectures were published in 1837, becoming the first textbook of meteorology. Constable died the same year but did not receive the recognition he deserved until after his death.

Constable is the focus of a new exhibition at the V&A museum that begins on Saturday, September 20.

The site where Luke Howard's Chesterton House stood in Balaam Street, Plaistow is now the West Ham ambulance depot. The property that boasted a rooftop observatory where he made many observations, has long gone though the boundary still remains. — The site where Luke Howard’s Chesterton House stood in Balaam Street, Plaistow, is now the West Ham ambulance depot. The property, which boasted a rooftop observatory where he made many observations, has long gone though the boundary still remains. It is not known if Howard and Constable ever met though the painter often visited and wrote to his sister, Martha Whalley, in East Ham, which is 2 miles west of Howard’s Plaistow residence

A selection of sketches Luke Howard used to illustrate his Clouds lecture

Weather

Heatwave? washout? Or just another changeable British summer?

Aside July 5, 2013 wansteadmeteo 4 Comments

With all the talk of heatwaves this week it won’t be long before the media switches from piping on about the UK facing “10 years of miserable summers” to “Is our climate getting warmer?”.

But the simple fact is that the UK’s climate has always varied greatly – some years, as in the last two, the pattern for summer has brought mostly miserable weather. Other years we get a run of warm, dry summers.

A case in point was the heatwave of July 1808. Far removed from images of freezing Georgian winters and miserable summers the July of 205 years ago was among the warmest ever. The monthly mean for July 1808, according to the Central England Temperature series, was 18.4C – the 6th hottest July since the beginning of the series in 1659.

Readings taken by Luke Howard at Plaistow show the build up of heat to the 14th. The series on the right, taken in Wanstead, around 3 miles to the north-east, will be added to by the author as July unfolds

Luke Howard, the ‘father of meteorology’ who at the time lived in Plaistow, referred to the heatwave in his diary on July 13th: “Temperature at 9am 84F. The intense heat of the maximum lasted nearly three hours till about 4pm. At 6pm the temperature was 90F.” Another entry mentions a reading taken nearby. “Another at Plashet, a mile and a half eastward, indicated 96F as the maximum under the shade of a house.”
While Howard’s methods of measuring the temperature ran short of modern standards, his thermometer was hung under a laurel bush, the values still give a valid insight into the heatwave.

Tales of the heatwave, which particularly affected east and north-east England, can be seen in letters sent to local newspapers around the country. Many describe labourers dying from heat exhaustion while working in fields. Farm animals and horses suffered a similar fate. One letter from Hull, published in the Coventry Mercury, said: “At Sigglesthorne, the honey in some beehives melted, ran out upon the ground, and most of the bees drowned in it. At Sutton, a lamb and a dog belonging to the Rev Mr Croft of Rowley, expired in the heat; and several birds dropped down dead, while flying over the streets of this town.”
Of course it is impossible to know about the health of people and animals that died but that birds dropped out the sky suggests extreme heat.

While temperature records of July 1808 are not unheard of in an English summer one record that remains is the size of the hail – which fell in damaging storms when a thundery breakdown arrived on the 15th.

The main storm missed Wanstead and the surrounding area – though Howard, writing in his Plaistow observatory, knew the weather was on the turn: “Dew on the grass, a fine breeze from ENE. Much lightning in the west this night, a few drops of rain.” Howard would have been referring to all the action about 120-odd miles west where one of the most ferocious storms in recorded history was unfolding.

Much was reported in the local press on the days following the storm which affected an area from Somerset northwards. As well as local records Luke Howard also noted national events in his diary: “After several days of uncommon and oppressive heat the city of Gloucester experienced a storm of thunder and lightning which extended many miles round and exceeded in awful phenomena any one remembered for many years past.”

Trees were “shivered to atoms”, livestock killed by lightning, crops were ruined and countless windows and glasshouses smashed by huge hailstones. A lot of the detail of the storm was compiled by a man named Crocker, then governor of Frome school, Somerset. One account from Batcombe describes a hailstone that measured 13.5 inches in circumference. To give you an idea of the size of a 342mm circumference hailstone I, with the help of my daughters, made one of my own.

It is thought the size of the 1808 hailstone may, along with a storm in 1697, be the national record for hailstone size - being 20mm greater in diameter than those measured in a Horsham, Surrey, storm in 1958 — It is thought the size of the 1808 hailstone may, along with a storm in 1697, be the national record for hailstone size – being 20mm greater in diameter than those measured in a Horsham, West Sussex, storm in 1958

Howard’s report continues: “The most tremendous circumstance of this storm was the destructive hail shower which accompanied its progress.”

The Tornado and Storm Research Organisation (TORRO) grades haistorms from H1-H10, where the hail increases in size from 5-10 to over 125mm in diameter. From the historic descriptions the 1808 storm was an H8/9.This exceeds the British record made during the Horsham, West Sussex, storm of September 5, 1958, which produced hailstones up to 80mm in diameter. Hailstones for the 1808 storm were about 109mm in diameter. Since 1650 there have been 119 independent H5 hailstorms in England and Wales.

Since 1900 there has been a halving in the frequency of recorded destructive hailstorms. Scientists are undecided on whether this is a result of climate change or just a variability of the British weather. But any future uptick in destructive hail should be tempered by this historic record.

It is my belief that people’s current expectations for summer were raised to unrealistic levels when we had a run of warm, dry summers a few years ago. The fact is that because of our maritime climate warm, dry summers occur in this country only occasionally. ‘Default’ summer weather is changeable, rather cloudy and, for many in the north, rather cool

So, if any media outlets do start coming out with any stories of “unprecedented heat” or “worst storm in history” bear in mind that it has probably all happened before.

Scott Whitehead
@wanstead_meteo
http://www.wansteadweather.co.uk