the Internet Public Library
Pathfinder: Weather on This Day in History
General Information
This guide is designed to help you when you want to know what the
weather was like for a particular date or time in history in a particular
location. There are several resources available on the Internet and in
print to help you with your research. Not every resource will have the
information you are looking for, but some of these may be good places to
start your search.
Some Places To Begin Your Research
Internet Resources:
- The
Climate Resources page
(http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/ol/climate/climateresources.html)
from
the National
Climatic Data Center (NCDC) (http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/).
- This page contains links to all of the NCDC's information about
historical weather data. If you choose the "Get/View
Online Climate Data" link, the site will offer you several options
for what type of data you want to look at. If you choose the
"Surface Data: Daily" link, the site will give you
several options of datasets to choose from. Make sure you choose the
dataset which includes the time period and location of the information you
are looking for. For example, you can choose the U.S.
Surface Data -- "Select by Station" link if you are interested in
information on a U.S. city between 1948 and the present. (There are also data sets for non-U.S. cities.) Then, the site
will take you to a page offering several options on how to display the
data. Once you have chosen one, the site will walk you through the rest
of the process of choosing the location and time period for it to display
the particular information you want.
-
The
Midwestern Climate Center(http://mcc.sws.uiuc.edu/index.html)
-
The Midwestern Climate Center provides historical climate datasets for a
region covering Illionois, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Michigan, Minnesota,
Missouri, Ohio, and Wisconsin. All of the MICIS datasets, unfortunately,
are restricted to paid subscribers to the service.
They do provide free access to
Historical Climate Summaries
which you can use to get a general idea about what the average temperature and precipition figures are for a city in the Midwest for a particular month.
-
The
Western Regional Climate
Center(http://www.wrcc.sage.dri.edu/)
-
The Western Regional Climate Center does not offer much free-of-charge in
the lines of historical weather data, although it does have a dataset on
daily average weather conditions. It covers Alaska, Arizona, N.
California, S. California, Colorado, Hawaii, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New
Mexico, Oregon, Utah, Washington, Wyoming. You may also want to check its
SNOTEL
dataset, which has unrestricted access to the regions' daily weather
data (snowfall, precipitation, temperature highs and lows) from 1993 to
the present, for its SNOTEL station locations.
-
The High Plains
Climate Center (http://hpccsun.unl.edu/), The
Northeast Regional Climate Center
(http://met-www.cit.cornell.edu/), and The
Southern Regional Climate Center
(http://www.srcc.lsu.edu/srcc.html)
-
These climate centers all have restricted, fee-based access to their
on-line datasets of historical weather data. They do also offer fee-based
personal research services if that type of access is of interest.
-
The Weather Processor's Image and Map Archive Page
(http://wxp.eas.purdue.edu/archive/), part of WXP: The Purdue
Weather Processor WWW Server (http://wxp.eas.purdue.edu/main.html)
-
The Image and Map Archive contains U.S. weather map images dating from
January 1995 to the present. Data such as temperature highs and lows and
wind speeds are recorded on the maps for many cities across the U.S.
Especially good if one is looking for general weather conditions for a
particular day.
Serial Publications:
One obvious place to start your search for the weather for a particular
day is to look it up in a newspaper. Many newspapers, large and small,
(at least in the U.S) will publish a listing of weather data for the
previous day in cities around the country and the world. The data will
usually include the high and low temperatures for that day, as well as
measurements of precipitation.
Many public and academic libraries retain copies of old local newspapers,
and old national newspapers such as the New York Times, often in microfilm
format. Librarians and other staff at a library can help you locate and
access any holdings they have of old newspapers. Contacting the newspaper
publisher directly may also be a way to access old issues of newspapers.
If you are looking for weather information for the past few years, some
newspapers now offer web sites through you which you can access current
and recent issues. Check out the IPL's Online
Newspapers Collection (http://www.ipl.org/reading/news/)
to see if the newspaper you are interested in has a web site.
Finally, you may want to check if your library has access to magazines
that often include articles on recent weather events and weather events of
the past. These include The American Weather Observer
(Belvidere Daily Republican), a monthly publication aimed at amateur and
professional weather observers, and Weatherwise (Heldref
Publications), a bimonthly publication aimed at the general weather
enthusiast.
Books:
Books are good sources for narrative information of the weather on a
particular day in history. Most of the following books provide
descriptions of famous weather events such as blizzards or droughts. Some
also have narratives of the weather on a historical day, such as
presidential election days or the first flight of an airplane. Browse
through the list below to see whether one of these books might have the
information you are looking for.
-
American Weather Stories (Patrick Hughes; U.S. Department
of Commerce, 1976).
- It says that its stories "trace the American
weather experience from the hurricanes that threatened Coumbus and
colonial settlers to the peculiar run of bad weather that has plagued
American presidents on Inauguration Day; from American who documented the
weather and climate of the Revolutionary and Civil War eras to those who
suffered through the 'year without a summer,' the Blizzard of '88, and the
dust bowl drought of the 1930's."
-
The Weather Factor (David M. Ludlum; Houghton Mifflin
Company, 1984).
- This book includes a section on weather events during
the colonial period; one on the weather on the battlefields during the
Revoutionary War, the War of 1812, and the Civil War; one on the weather
during presidential election and inauguration days; one on the weather
during American sporting events; and one on the weather the weather during
American advancements in flight.
-
The History of American Weather Series, which includes
Early American Hurricanes 1492-1870 and Early
American Winters 1604-1820 (David M. Ludlum, American
Meteorological Society, 1963 and 1966).
- Detailed accounts of weather
events and general weather conditions, pulled from journals and other
original documents from the times. Includes exact dates and locations
when that information is available.
-
Climates of the States, The Weather
Almanac, and Weather of U.S. Cities (Gale
Research Company).
- These titles, which are published periodically to
include recent data, are generally found in a library's reference
collection. Their coverage mostly focuses on U.S. cities, although the
Weather Almanac series has some coverage of world cities. Their weather
data includes mean temperature and precipitation data for each month of
the year, so they are not particularly useful for finding the figure for
one day in one year. They do, however, have exact dates for weather
extremes, if you are looking for that information.
This pathfinder was created by Patricia Memmott