I've just finished reading Harry Griffin's book, written in 1961, called "Inside the Real Lakeland", and a section on extreme weather events reminded me about how often I've read of extraordinary weather events in history books or (like this one) books on a specific subject or about a specific area. It also occurred to me that I've given many of those books away or they were borrowed from the library in the first place, and now I can't remember the multitudinous references to extreme and/or extraordinary weather I've read about over the years. That's a shame, because those of us who have read much history are aware that the increasingly strident claims about unprecedented weather events seem to fly in the face of what we know about previous weather events, and a bit more balance might be brought to the debate if those earlier events were better understood, were more widely known, and particularly if they could be sourced in a single, convenient location. To that end, what follows is a long quote from Griffin's book, so that it's saved here for posterity, and if I find other examples from future reading, I'll add them to this thread. Please do feel free to add your own examples, if you have them:

Page 202:

"The records give Seathwaite the doubtful distinction of staging the wettest Lake District day ever - 8.03 inches on November 12th, 1897 - and the hamlet can also claim eight of the ten wettest days in the country during the last 100 years. But when Seathwaite was having its eight inches of rain in a day it is quite possible that ten or even twelve inches were falling on the tops of the Scafell fells where there are no rain gauges."

[The relevance of this is that Harry Griffin was a true mountain man, and was well aware that it rains much more heavily on the fells than in the valleys. The "record" set in a new (and not necessarily officially accurate) rain gauge high on the Honister fells a few years ago might not have been a record at all if we'd had a rain gauge there on November 12th 1897].

Page 203:

"...I can also remember a day at Seathwaite, not many years ago, when the floods washed away the bridge which carries the road to the hamlet, tore down the walls around the intake fields, and swirled into the farm kitchens."

"The worst August Mr Bainbridge could remember was that of 1950, when nearly 27 inches of rain fell on the Seathwaite fells - more rain than some parts of the country get in a whole year.

"But, of course, there have been much worse months in Lakeland than that over the years, and, on many occasions, some quite incredible downpours. One of the worst of these in recent years was the cloudburst which cut Kirkstone Pass a few years ago and brought a trail of destruction to Troutbeck village, but the cloudburst over Scafell in the summer of 1958 might have been even more remarkable, although I believe nobody saw it happen. Thousands of tons of rock were gouged, perhaps within seconds, out of the mountainside and hurled down towards the valleys. Avalanches of boulders were hurled over the precipices, huge sections of fellside were laid bare, old becks heaped high with rocks, turf and bracken and new gullies carved out of the upland slopes. Nothing could possibly have survived the crash and havoc of the upheaval, but perhaps nobody even heard it, as I think it happened during the night."

Pages 203 - 205:

"Some long-forgotten Lakeland storms must have been even worse. One of these caused the torrent which gouged out the ravine, 18 feet dip, north of the summit of High Street...".

"The floods of Wednesday, November 2nd, 1898, were probably the worst in Lakeland in living memory - very much worse than those of December 1954. It is said that the level of Windermere was so high that people were able to row right across Belle Isle which was completely submerged, only the tree tops showing above the water. And craft in boat houses around Bowness Bay rose on the flood waters until they were bumping up against the ceilings. Kentmere Reservoir was so full in 1898 that there were fears that it might overflow, with disastrous consequences to the people of Keswick, Burneside and Staveley, but the level stayed just below the very top of the bank. Ambleside was cut off form the north by road and the postman to Dungeon Ghyll could only get as far as Chapel Stile.....Langdale was practically one huge lake, some of the buildings at the gunpowder works were washed away, bridges were destroyed at Patterdale and Coniston, a train was held up at Torver because of the risk of the swollen beck putting out the fire in the driver's cab, and the water was six feet deep on some of the roads.

"As the angry Troutbeck came swirling down the valley towards Windermere, carrying away walls and causing landslides from the fellsides, the dalesfolk could hear, above the roar of the flood waters, the nasty sound of huge boulders gouging out the river bed. Some of these boulders weighed several tons, and they say the bed of the stream was hollowed out a further three or four feet during that one day's flooding. Two Kendal bridges over the River Kent and several other bridges in the district were smashed. Sheep swept down the valley from Troutbeck Park were afterwards found to have been shorn of their wool as neatly as if they had been clipped. The level of Windermere was said to be several inches over the steam pier at Bowness and six inches deep on the station waregouse floor.

"The main road from Grasmere to Keswick was completely wrecked and the northern side of Dunmail Raise was covered with boulders so that it looked like a dried-up river bed. Nearer Wythburn the road was buried beneath four feet of rubble and gravel, with "yeast-like mud" about a foot deep on either side of the road. Further along the road, where Sandy Gill descends from Browncove Crags to the lake, the road was washed away to the depth of 10 feet, while boulders were piled up nearly 20 feet high on either side of the new stream bed.

"...A few years before the war, the Martindale Beck pounded into Ullswater with such force that its current forced the steamer which was at least 200 yards from the shore, out of its course. On another occasion a torrent from High Street brought down a landslide at Hartsop which covered fields to a depth of 30 feet, while a landslide at Threlkeld once crashed across the main road, burying a bus in the debris.

"...The records speak of a particularly tremendous flood on October 13th, 1771, which destroyed all the bridges across the Tyne and Wear except one. In Kendal this same flood washed away an addition to Nether Bridge which had been completed only three weeks previously while at Beetham it was said that graves were washed open and corpses and coffins floated about the flooded fields.

"The cloudburst which broke over the slopes of Wansfell on a June afternoon in 1953 is fresh in the memory of many of us. Within three hours that day nearly two and a half inches of rain and hailstones fell in Ambleside but nobody knows the tremendous weight of rain which fell on the fellside during the cloudburst. The shade temperature had crawled into the eighties when nature suddenly went berserk in that quiet corner and within two hours did more damage than a thousand men could do in a week. One moment the fells were steaming in the sunshine but within half an hour hailstones as big as pigeons' eggs were falling out of the skies, huge trees were being wrenched out by their roots, and boulders, many tons in weight, were crashing down the fellside. Great floods carved out new ravines and tore up walls and roads as they surged, in boiling brown fury, down to the valley, and a holiday visitor was washed to his death."

Page 208:

"Many people will also remember the last day of September, 1953 when, in the short space of 17 hours, 6.29 inches of rain fell in Langdale, so that the beck carved out a new course and the road was washed away."

Many buildings and structures in river valleys contain plaques, marks, carvings etc indicating previous recorded high water marks. These are indicators of water levels rather than rainfall rates. Riverside pubs, adjacent bridges and Canal Lock keeper's Cottages are a good source. Nice walk anyway if none are found.

Around the Mediterranean Coast there are numerous dry valleys. When the big storm does hit, they are no longer dry, and recent man-made structures, houses, tourist bars, marinas, restaurants etc are flooded or swept away. Such floods are regular over history, but few people over history have ever bothered to record rainfall. Therefore they are reported as unprecedented events.

The consistent problem is the accuracy of the recording of the rate of rain fall. Even if there was routine regular recording, the accuracy of the measurement and recording will be disputed by the modern experts in adjusting records to suit their purposes.

Over the summer, there were 1,200 instances of places in the northern hemisphere being the hottest they'd ever been in a given month.

Source

The Southern Hemisphere is scorching: Unprecedented heat in Chile, Argentina and Australia

Source

Australia (where the wildfires have people sheltering on beaches).

So it goes.

Phil, you're welcome on this thread, of course, but rather predictably you've missed it's entire point, which has been picked up on by Radical Rodent. Today's "records" and extreme events are records and extreme events only if you ignore history; and/or only because of 24/7 news reporting, smart 'phones able to record things which in earlier years wouldn't even have been noticed; massively expanded human populations, with people living, visiting and building in areas where humans wouldn't have been in the past; and temperature and rainfall gauges recently being placed in locations where they weren't placed before. And so on.

Thus, digging out old records of extreme weather events helps put the climate alarmism and hysteria in its proper historical perspective. That's all, nothing more, nothing less.

I found Griffin's references to the 19th century floods and damage to the road north of Dunmail Raise and along the side of Thirlmere particularly apt because it so closely mirrored what happened in recent floods there (albeit the 19th century event was obviously more extreme); yet reporting of the recent event put it down to climate change and suggested - wrongly as it turns out - that it was unprecedented.

The word "unprecedented", when related to weather, has a strange effect on me - I go on autopilot and consult Paul Homewood. Commonly it becomes "precedented".

I remember being taught in Geography during the late 1970s, about the Lynmouth floods. Global Warming was never mentioned. I don't remember previous floods being referred to

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lynmouth_Flood
"Similar floods had been recorded at Lynmouth in 1607 and 1796. After the 1952 disaster, Lynmouth village was rebuilt, including diverting the river around the village. The small group of houses on the bank of the East Lyn river called Middleham between Lynmouth and Watersmeet was destroyed and never rebuilt. Today, there stands a memorial garden.[4]

On 16 August 2004, a similar event happened in Cornwall, when flash floods caused extensive damage to Boscastle, but without loss of life. The hydrological setting of these two villages is very similar"

But when Boscastle flooded, unprecedented Global Warming was mentioned, despite all the evidence it had happened before:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_Boscastle_flood
"The last time Boscastle had suffered notable flooding was in 1996 as a result of Hurricane Lili, but floods are recorded in 1847, 1957, on 3 June 1958 (one man drowned) and in 1963. On 16 August 1952 the small town of Lynmouth, 50 miles (80 km) north-east along the north coast in Devon near Exmoor, suffered extensive damage in a catastrophic flood, in which 34 people lost their lives. Coincidentally, this was 52 years to the day before Boscastle's 2004 flood."

It is easy to say something is unprecedented, if you don't bother to do any research. This comes naturally to journalists seeking sensational headlines. Climate Scientists have adopted the same levels of accuracy and integrity.

For a French perspective, historian Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie.

In English, there is:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Times-Feast-Famine-History-Climate/dp/0045510202/ref=sr_1_2?keywords=Emmanuel+Le+Roy+Ladurie&qid=1578320699&sr=8-2

Comment from "our ilk":

"Ladurie published this before Al Gore promised we would all fry, and it is unblemished by today's frenzy. His painstaking of analysis from European temperature proxies then available are imaginative, evocative, and -- for the data then available -- persuasive. If you've an inclination for a cool and unhurried look at historical climate, this book is very rewarding."

Phil Clarke, seems there was a Mediaeval Warm Period and a Little Ice Age after all.

Better tell Mann.

From Phil's link about the temperature "records":

"The data included measurements from weather stations in the northern hemisphere that had at least 40 years of observations.

Some of this data has not yet been subjected to formal review by weather agencies. These reviews, to check for problems that might have produced false readings, sometimes cause a small fraction of the records to be discounted."

And:

"In part, the number of new records is affected by where heatwaves occur, as well as the temperatures recorded. There are more weather stations in the United States and Europe, meaning that a heatwave in those areas has the potential to break more records."

Which rather reinforces my point.

There are also things like this (to which I apply the same caveat as I would apply to heat "records") which don't seem to get quite the same traction in the MSM, for some reason...:

"January–February 2019 North American cold wave"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/January%E2%80%93February_2019_North_American_cold_wave

"The polar vortex split into three parts, with the dominant part setting up over the Great Lakes and Nunavut. This gave prairie Canada and northern Ontario a persistent northern flow, leading to record cold temperatures."

Lots of "records" there too.

All these "records"!

"If you've an inclination for a cool and unhurried look at historical climate".

Not really you, Mr Clarke, is it?

Flooding of the River Thames is routinely reported as Unprecedented. The flooding of January 2003 was bad, but lower than 1947 (caused by rapid snow melt, rather than heavy rain).

From Reading upstream through Oxford, 1894 was worse than 1947

https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2015/07/13/a-history-of-floods-in-windsor-2/

http://oxfordhistory.org.uk/floods/1894/index.html

http://www.thamesweb.co.uk/windsor/windsorhistory/floods1875.html

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1947_Thames_flood

The Thames Valley has seen intensive development over the last 100+ years, much of it on land not previously built on, because "everybody" knew it flooded. Developers know best, and Planning Officers are overruled by politically motivated elected Councillors (all Parties)

Developments not on floodplains simply increase the rate at which rainfall enters drainage systems and water courses. They may not flood, but increase the risks for those downstream.

Pertinent on this thread, I think:

https://www.spectator.com.au/2017/09/not-really-fit-for-purpose-the-bureau-of-meteorology/

Thanks to tomo on unthreaded for the link.

"Unprecedented" fires the result of unprecedented green stupidity:

https://www.spectator.com.au/2020/01/fighting-fire-with-fires/

( Thanks for the reminders to look at Spectator Oz! )

Marohasy?

https://jennifermarohasy.com/2020/01/it-has-been-hotter-fires-have-burnt-larger-areas/

My view is that all BoM data are suspect.

The idea that fuel load is not the biggest factor is just plain silly.

Any excuse.

"Any excuse.
Jan 7, 2020 at 10:08 PM Phil Clarke"

Unfortunately for Hockey Teamsters, genuine evidence, that has not been tampered with, does show that the current Global Warming, cold snaps, droughts, floods etc are not unprecedented.

The number of arsonists convicted in Australia may set record levels.

Grant Foster huh?

Long-lost Oscar Wilde play found:

"Mr Clarke Deflects."

( Not one of his best. Tear-stained copy. )

Phil, please offer your own (in your own words) critique of Jennifer Marohasy's critique of the Australian BoM's alleged fiddling of the data, then we can talk about it again. Links to alarmist websites without anything more really don't cut it.

Grant does statistics for a living, I could not improve on his exposition. He demonstrates that Marohasy's claim that summer 38/39 was hotter 2019 is breathtaking cherry picking, most blatently by dicarding all data after 1998, and relying on a single site.

I can see how you would want to dismiss rather than debate this, but there it is; she's a liar.

Jan 8, 2020 at 9:07 AM Phil Clarke

Try again without lying