[summer '85]

Looking back at 1855, a cold year with an annual CET of 8.02

Jan: 2.4 (-0.2)
Feb: -1.7 (-5.6)
Mar: 3.3 (-2.2)
Apr: 7.1 (-0.9)
May: 8.8 (-2.8)
Jun: 13.3 (-1.4)
Jul: 16.8 (+0.7)
Aug: 15.7 (+0.4)
Sep: 13.2 (+0.2)
Oct: 9.7 (0.0)
Nov: 5.3 (-1.0)
Dec: 2.4 (-2.1)

February: 3rd coldest ever recorded: 6th-23rd Feb 1855: -3.71

May: 4th coldest ever recorded despite a warm spell from the 24th to 27th. Take out that warm spell and the rest of the month just average 7.9C

1855: 17th coldest year ever recorded
Spring 1855: 12th coldest ever recorded

The first 5 months of 1855 are the 4th coldest ever recorded with a CET mean of 3.98

Winter 1854-55 is the 9th driest winter ever recorded, January the 4th driest on record

July and October were particularly wet

1855 is the 17th driest year on record on the back of 1854 which is the 4th driest year on record

[summer '85]

Some accounts of 1855

 Father Ryan of Carn, Ireland

1855: The frost commenced on the 5th of January and continued increasing in intensity until a party of twenty persons crossed upon the Ice from Dreenan (a townland on Boa Island in Lower Lough Erne) onto Muckross Point. (About three miles west from Pettigo towards Belleek)

On the 17th of February at Pettigo the snow fell to cover the ground about six inches.

On the 22nd 23rd a Very warm and genial sun. The snow still covering the ground. N. Ryan

Great Snow on the 24th of February 1855.

On the 26th thaw.

On the 5th of March no spade or plough can enter the ground more than three inches. The frost under that depth is fully twelve inches; no field labour anywhere March [1st] 1855

March 7th Frost so hard that a spade can not enter the ground in the rear of my house Dated as above 1855.

March 14th The frost still in the mountains impenetrable to spade or plough.

April 23rd Potatoes planted. Turf cut on May 10th

May 3rd A great fall of snow and on this date no appearance of grass and the bushes and trees I may say without leaves. May 10th 1855

Sept. 1st 1855: After high winds and heavy rain for a week preceding, the weather has become fine 3rd a very hot day Potatoes doing well. The corn shorn It has been the calmest summer I have ever completed? at L(ough) Derg and it has been my 29th completed on that celebrated spot. (Everyone remembers the number of times they have completed the arduous Lough Derg Pilgrimage)

October 11th After a long continuation of the finest weather for handing corn sheaves this day has set in with heavy rain, the only wet day the 7th of August. N Ryan A fine crop of potatoes scarcely any affected by blight

 http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~msjenkins/misc/fthrryan.htm

 Diary of Charles Tiplady Jan. 21. About this time a very severe frost commenced, and continued without intermission until the 20th February. All the large rivers in the Kingdom - Thames, Sever, Mersey, Exe, Dee, Ribble, &c. - were frozen over. Great distress in Liverpool, and bread-riots.

 Feb. 18. Sunday. A sort of Fair was held on Rishton Reservoir; from 8,000 to 10,000 people visited it, the ice was two feet thick.

Feb. 22. Frost continues in unabated rigour.

Feb. 23. Yesterday the cold was intense; about 3 p.m, the wind veered to the south-east, and at 6 o'clock snow began to fall, and continued falling during the night.

Feb. 24-25. Thaw thoroughly set in, and lasted until March 1st.

 Feb. 27. Went to London on the Gas Question. 28th, Appeared before Lord Redesdale in Committee; did pretty well; saw ice on the Thames.

May. 4. This year, up to this date, we cannot have had less than one hundred nights of severe frost.

 May. 31. Dreadfully cold winds, winterly and wet.

 http://www.cottontown.org/page.cfm?language=eng&pageID=1877

[summer '85]

One side note, February 1855 is when the famous Devil's footprints mysteriously appeared in snow in south Devon. :o

http://www.mysteriousbritain.co.uk/fortean/devils_foot.html

[BUTTERFLY]

"The first 5 months of 1855 are the 4th coldest ever recorded with a CET mean of 3.98"

 I make the CET for January to May 1855 as 4.07 deg. C., which rounds up to 4.1 deg. C., not 4.0 deg. C. I have taken into account the numbers of days to calculate the averages for periods of 2-12 months using a MS-WORKS Spreadsheet. This may give very slightly different figures than say adding the mean temperatures for say December to February together and dividing by 3 (remember February has 3 days less than January to December).

I also make January to May 1740, with 2.97 deg. C. (a degree below that of 1855), the coldest January to May period. with 1695 (3.55 deg. C.), 1684 (3.77 deg. C.) and 1698 (4.05 deg. C.) also colder than 1855 which thus is the 5th coldest January to May period. The coldest 5 month period was 0.81 deg. C. from November 1683 to March 1684; December 1683 to February 1684 at -1.17 deg. C. was the coldest winter in Central England in the 1659-2006 period; 1962/1963 though much better known, was the 3rd coldest (and coldest for 223 years) at -0.32 deg. C., as 1739/40 was -0.36 deg. C. 1740 at 6.9 deg. C. CET was also the coldest calendar year and January to December 1740 the coldest 12 months. Note that the warmest calendar year (10.66 deg. C. in 1999) did not coincide with the warmest 12 months (11.1 deg. C. from November 1994 to October 1995).

I have a number of MS-WORKS spreadsheet files for the following:

CENTRAL ENGLAND TEMPERATURE 1659-2006

RAINFALL IN ENGLAND & WALES 1766-2006

MEAN TEMPERATURE, RAINFALL, AND SUNSHINE IN ENGLAND AND WALES (FROM 1914-2006 ONWARDS, EXCEPT SUNSHINE 1929-2006

AS LAST BUT FOR (a) SCOTLAND (b) NORTHERN IRELAND

13 STATIONS IN THE REPUBLIC OF IRELAND (MEAN TEMPERATURE AND RAINFALL, INCLUDING AVERAGES) IN SEPARATE FILES FOR PAIRED YEARS (2001-2002, 2002-2003, 2003-2004, 2004-2005, 2005-2006).

 

If anyone is interested in receiving copies of these please E-mail me privately; I can E-mail these to you or put them on a CD, etc. Some files are several Megabytes and if you do not have broadband will take a long time to download, hence a CD may be more appropriate. The files can be updated with data (generally each month as it becomes available), eg from www.met-office.gov.uk or www.met.ie; a basic mathematical knowledge and experience with spreadsheets (including formulae) would be needed.

[mianfei]

 summer said:

Winter 1854-55 is the 9th driest winter ever recorded, January the 4th driest on record

July and October were particularly wet

1855 is the 17th driest year on record on the back of 1854 which is the 4th driest year on record

It’s strange that the major weather site at booty.org.uk does not note that 1854 and 1855 are the driest consecutive calendar years in the EWP series, with a combined total of 1417 millimetres, which shades 1780 and 1781 with a total of 1433 mm.

It’s also notable that the occurrence between 1854 and 1870 of five of the seventeen driest calendar years in the EWP series (five of the twelve driest since 1806) is not discussed. One would imagine that with 1858 being the fifteenth driest year in the EWP series, and with the driest December to March on record, that streamflows and aquifers would have been at least then as low as during the late Victorian dry period from 1887 to 1902, especially since June of 1858 was very hot with a CET of 16.8˚C, a value exceeded since only by 1976.

Then there are the hot and dry summers of 1868 and 1870: but for a very wet October 1870 would have been the driest year of the nineteenth century. In fact, October 1870 hold the record for the highest proportion of a calendar year’s rainfall in one month in the EWP series, with 21.74 percent.

The period from 1853 to 1902 - the “Victorian” age - is distinctive for the occurrence in the EWP series of three long-term wet and dry cycles in a manner not observed during any other time in nearly 250 years of data; viz:

• 1853 to 1871 had an average annual EWP of 865 millimetres
• 1872 to 1886 had an average annual EWP of 1,003 millimetres
• 1887 to 1902 had an average annual EWP of 846 millimetres

Here we have a wet cycle which is not equalled in nearly 250 years and two adjacent dry periods, the earlier of which was interrupted by the wet years of 1860 (twentieth wettest) and 1866 (34th wettest), equalled only from 1800 to 1815 with an average of 854 millimetres.