CHRISTMAS DAY 1878 - MINUS 14 FOR FATHER CHRISTMAS

Researched and written by Roy Maryon of the Yateley Society

Roy had been one of the researchers contributing to the Yateley History Project and used the Society‘s own transcriptions of the census records for 1841, 1851, 1861, 1871 and 1881. Roy at the Met Office so we asked him to tell us what the weather had been like in 1878

Mar 2008: Roy‘s diagrams and tables have not yet been added to these webpages

CARD D: WHAT WAS THE WEATHER LIKE IN 1878?

This old chart from the early days of the Met Office shows that the run-up to Christmas, 1878, was very cold. Snow had fallen in the North and West, but it became generally dry on Christmas Eve as a small high drifted south-east across the country. On Christmas Eve temperatures reached only 33deg F (0.5deg C) in London, but stayed well below freezing at Oxford˜ 25deg F (minus 3.9deg C)˜ where, during the night, they plunged to 6deg F (minus 14.4deg C). Christmas Day began very cold, with low overcast and some freezing fog, but it became less cold during the day as the wind picked up from a southerly quarter, driving a few squally showers onto the Hampshire coast.

R.H.Scott was the successor to the founder of the Met Office, [RobertFitzRoy|Admiral ~Fitzroy* (of the Beagle), who had committed suicide some years before. To be of any use weather observations had to be transmitted by telegraph, and also shown here are some extracts, made at the time, from incoming telegrams on Christmas Day. Weather forecasting was in its infancy (if that!), and many years were to elapse before the Norwegian meteorologists developed a clear idea of the weather front‘.

*We in the Society did not know it at the time but Admiral Robert FitzRoy, founder of the Met Office was half cousin of Horatio FitzRoy of Frogmore House who sat on the School Board was the village school on Yateley Green

Back to 1993 Exhibition: Yateley in 1878

(c) The Yateley Society 2008

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