1

1-

Fig. 5 Horizontal plane through L. The curves indicate the points in the plane where 0 is likely to see the 22" halo. 0 is directly below 0' facing the lighthouse at distance 5h (for h see Fig. 1)

-- ,?So * / - - - - - - - //

-- I , ,

\ /

/ \ / \ L H 3 ql 5

/ 0 \

2 2 O

1 1 1

/ /

/ / , . .

I / - - - _ _ _ - - . . \

'\

22" halo. Hattinga Verschure (1979) has observed this kind of phenomenon in floating ice needles in the beam of a torch.

Yet another bright spot may be visible if 6 = 46", corresponding to the 46" halo. By means of the equations (1) and (2) and taking 6 = 22" (22" halo) or 6 =46" (46" halo), the movement of the haloes along the beam can be computed.

Fig. 5 gives an example for d = 5h: the haloes are visible for only a short time during each rotation.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

The advice of Miss S. M. McNab in the preparation of this manuscript is gratefully acknowledged.

REFERENCES

Floor, C. (1978) Regenboog in de lichtbundel van een vuurtoren. Zenit, 5, pp. 274-277 Harsch, J. and Walker, J. D. (1975) Double rainbow and dark band in searchlight beams.

Hattinga Verschure, P. P. (1979) Waarnemingen van optische verschijnselen in februari

Jorgensen, N. L. (1953) Polarisation of light from illuminated areas in a ceilometer beam

Kangieser, P. C. (1950) Refraction phenomena affecting ceilometer observations.

Minnaert, M. (1954) The nature of light and colour in the open air. Dover Publ. New York

Am. .I. Phys., 43, pp. 453-455

1979. Weerspiegel, 6, pp. 147-148

during rain. .J. Mereor., 10, pp. 160-164

Mon. Weath. Rev., 78, pp. 211-216

SOME LATE TUDOR WEATHER RECORDS FROM WEST YORKSHIRE

By R. CLARK New University of Ulster

HERE are few specific weather records from the uplands of northern England before T modern times and the advent of instrumental measurement. What reports there are tend to be spasmodic and in rather general terms. Manley (l952), discussing the available material for the whole of Britain since Tudor times, has called it 'surprisingly fragmentary'. But the picture is cumulative and additional observations fill gaps for both time and place.

208

During the reign of the first Elizabeth, and in early Stuart times, the Kaye family of Woodsome and Slaithwaite, in the West Yorkshire Pennines, kept an account of family and estate affairs within which there are a few notes of what they seem to have regarded as abnormal weather events. These belong to an interesting period in the history of European weather, a period characterised by climate deterioration and culminating in the Little Ice Age. Lamb (1966) has described the years 1550 to 1600 as the early stages of the Little Ice Age, suggesting that easterly winds were particularly frequent during the winters. The decade of the 1590s was especially subject to poor summers and harsh winters, marginal uplands being subject to distress and shortage. In a later analysis Lamb (1977) writes of a sharp shift to colder conditions in the years 1540-60 with a subsequent marked increase in the frequency of exceptionally severe winters. The summers of 1594-98 were so wet that poor harvests accounted for widespread dearth and famine in Europe.

Le Roy Ladurie (1972) also emphasises the susceptibility of the European cereal- based economy to the deteriorating climate, picking out seven successive years of late springs and late harvests from 1591 to 1597, the nineties being the coldest decade of the century. Grain became expensive and scarce; famine and riots occurred from England across the breadth of Europe (Hoskins 1964).

The Kayes’ record of their agricultural activities, their land improvements and harvests survives in manuscript transcription MS 178 of the Yorkshire Archaeological Society. In this account some spellings have been modernised, but dates have not been revised to take account of the move from the old calendar. Their estate included moorlands, marginal pastures, and open arable fields. Clearly they were alert to the impact of weather on their enterprises. It is, perhaps, surprising that in such a period of deteriorating climate so few years are noticed. The first is 1579: ‘. . . it was continually in months September and October such great winds and rain as the like was not seen before. Much corn was lost in the fields and much was left to sow for lack of drought’. It seems that September and October were regarded as normal harvest months; it is not lateness that is lamented. In some ways this was a similar autumn to that experienced last year in the north-west of the British Isles exactly four hundred years later. In 1579 the harvest was not completed and the fields for winter corn were not all sown out, as the land could not be tilled because of wet soil.

A record for 1580-81 describes a period of contrast between wetness and drought. It runs: ‘noted that this XXIII year of Queen Elizabeth from the XX“’ day unto Pentecost such moist weather so that no week escaped without such rain which caused a rich spring time and plenty of hay. From St. Peter’s day the same year unto St. Luke’s day after Michaelmas almost no rain in effect not three days rain in all that tyme which caused such a drought as the like was never seen.’ There is, however, no mention of any impact of the drought on crop yields and pasture.

The year 1584 was also one of contradictions. On the fifth of May ‘there was for a good hour’s space such great thunder and such great hail and such store of rain as has not been seen the like in so short a time in this country for forty years before. Yet in the summer after from mid April was the wettest summer that any man can tell of-’. But in that year he had ‘all his hay got by the 20th day of July - 23 loads of good hay’. The wetness which encouraged the grass failed to ruin the hay harvest.

It is unfortunate that from the severe nineties there is reference to 1590 and 1591 only. The account reads: ‘Memorandum, that this summer Anno Domini 1591 was the driest summer that hath been within memory of man for betwixt the 25th day of March and Michaelmas was not three whole days of rain whereby caused great scarcity of grass; the former year being droughty also, and yet great plenty of corn this year.’

Clearly, in the West Yorkshire Pennines, the cold decade started with dry summers and pastoral enterprises suffered more than did grain growing. No further weather records appear from the nineties, no note of severe winters, of poor harvest, of distress among the tenantry or of the impact of abnormal weather on their own harvests. There does not appear to have been any indication of decline in prosperity in this period, certainly none which can be ascribed to the movement into the Little Ice Age. However, it

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APRIL 1980 VOl. 35 No. 4

Rainfall radar - progress South Wales floods

Rainfall Papua New Guinea

210

should be noted that local prosperity was being increasingly strongly sustained by a domestic woollen industry which could be expected to cushion the more restricted agrarian economy.

Whether the lack of further weather records implies lack of abnormal weather or a less meticulous recording of events is a matter of speculation. Even though the record is sporadic and unsystematic it represents a considerable part of what is known of climatic vagaries and their impact in that area at that time.

Almost a hundred years later the accounts of the family’s fulling mills on the River Colne at Slaithwaite afford a further isolated light on the weather as another severe phase within the Little Ice Age approached. The account for the half year to Whitsuntide (Crump and Ghorbal 1935) shows that fulling of cloths proceeded despite the ‘longest frost and droughtyest summer that was ever heard of’. The winter of 1683-84 was generally a severe one as Manley noted.

It is not easy to decide what weight to give such comments as ‘droughtyest summer that was ever heard o f , ‘driest within memory of man’, ‘the like was not seen before’. But clearly the occurrences made a great impression and, with the absence of a longer series of recordings, we are led to assume that only the more significant local weather events were put on record.

REFERENCES

Crump, W. B., and Ghorbal, G. (1935) History of the Huddersfield Woollen

Hoskins, W. G. (1964) Harvest fluctuations and English economic history 1620-1759.

Lamb, H. H. (1966) The Changing Climate. Methuen, London Lamb, H. H. (1977) Climate. Present, Past and Future, Vol. 2. Methuen, London Le Roy Ladurie (1972) Times of Feast, Times of Famine. Allen and Unwin, London

Manley, G. (1952) Climate and the British Scene. Collins, London

Industry. Tolson Memorial Museum, Huddersfield

Agric. Hist. Rev., 16, pp. 15-3 1

(translated by Barbara Bray)

APRIL 1980 COVER

We must apologise for the omission of the full caption to the cover photograph in the April issue. The radar picture, reproduced opposite, shows two rain bands associated with an eastward-moving cold front at 1930 GMT on 19 September 1979. The surface cold front lay close to the rear of the second band (mid-Wales to the Isles of Scilly). Areas of rain are shown pink or red according to whether the rainfall intensity, averaged over 5 X 5 km squares, was light-to-moderate, or heavy. Action replay showed that individual rain areas tens of kilometres across were trackable for many hours.

Pictures such as this, available routinely at the Meteorological Office Radar Research Laboratory at Malvern within four minutes of real time, are generated automatically from data received from radars at Camborne (Cornwall), Upavon (Wiltshire) and Clee Hill (Shropshire). Data from other radars will be incorporated as new radars are established. The maximum coverage of the radars is defined by the blue circles, although some shallow precipitation systems are not detected out to the farthest ranges. The electronically generated coastline (white dots) shows that Ireland, northern and eastern England, and north France are beyond the range of the three-radar network.

A corresponding synoptic analysis appeared in the April issue.

21 1