The recent sunny spells have got me thinking about some of my favourite objects in the meteorology collection – sunshine recorders. John Francis Campbell (1821-1885), of the Hebridean island of Islay, designed the apparatus pictured above. You may be able to figure out how it works just from looking at it… The idea is that the glass ball acts as a lens, focusing the sun’s rays onto an area within the wooden cup and scorching it. As the sun travels from east to […]
It looks like spring is finally here. About time too, after the coldest UK winter for over 30 years. The figures are in, and this year the mean temperature for 1 December – 24 February was just 1.51 °C, compared to a long-term average of 3.7 °C. But if you think that’s bad, cast your mind back to The Big Freeze of 1962/63, when parts of Wales and the South West were buried under snowdrifts six metres high, the Thames froze, and over 400 Football League and […]