OK, here’s the Durham Weather links page. I’ve tried to keep the links a little unique and not just fall into the pattern of every other weather site on the net. The pages featured here are all easy to use and understand and may even be useful ! If you have any comments or suggestions, please feel free to Contact Us.
Durham University Weather Pages
Apart from the Radcliffe Observatory at Oxford, Durham University Observatory has the unbroken longest series of meteorological observations for any university in the UK. Daily records date from the late 1840s. Today, the observations are made using an automatic weather station; this provides online data to the Meteorological Office and allows us to maintain our long records. Current conditions are here.
The weather station is run by Professor Tim Burt.
Winter chills: 1947 and 1963
Rarely in the UK – or anywhere, for that matter – is a train completely buried in snow. But that’s exactly what happened on Dartmoor in March 1891 and in northern Scotland in January 1978. The winters that produced such phenomenal snowstorms were not, however, generally snowy – unlike the remarkable winter of 1947, the snowiest since 1814.
The British Weather by Trevor Harley
Trevor Harley’s excellent weather webpages are a collection of records, information from his own weather station, along with records of the British weather since 1900. You can browse by month or by year, and find a concise history of the British weather in any month since the turn of the last century. Compulsive reading for the weather nut.
Archived Weather Charts
This is an archive of the charts detailed above. It’s a German language site, but is very easy to use, you just choose the date of the weather chart you want to see. You can’t really go far wrong. The charts go back as far as 27th January 1998, which is conveniently close to the start of the records here.
Bonacina/O’Hara Snowfall Analysis
In an attempt to analyse each winter’s snowfall events for the UK, a man called L.C.W. Bonacina produced this snowfall analysis list. It’s a subjective analysis of each winter’s snowfalls, which I have tried to maintain and continue in recent years in similar style (as his original list only went up to 1975). See if you remember correctly! If there are any glaring omissions, please let me know.
The British Isles Weather Diary
Roger Brugge’s British Isles Weather Diary contains a daily summary of UK weather data, with daily extremes of high temp, low temp, wettest and sunniest places. It is normally updated a couple of days in arrears and is archived back to 1999.
Pollen Forecast
For those of you who happen to suffer from Hay Fever (and I include myself amongst this unfortunate group) then a site you may be interested in is the Met Office Pollen Forecast. There’s all the information about Pollen that you could ever wish to know (but were afraid to ask) and you can also get a Pollen forecast, so you know when to hide.
River Level at Elvet Bridge, Durham
In view of the fact that Mother Nature seems to have decided that a substantial percentage of the population should, in fact, live underwater, we provide a link to the river level at Elvet Bridge. I know flooding isn’t a big problem in Gilesgate but it’s still a nice page to have instant access to.
Durham Amateur Rowing Club Webcam
The WebCam and weather station monitors the river/weather conditions at the City Boathouse 24 hours a day, 365 days per year. Installed in 2013 we aim to help our members to minimise trips to Durham when the river conditions are not suitable for training.
Road Conditions from the North East
You know all those weather stations you see beside the roads? Well, here’s a map where you can take a look at the data they produce. There’s a Tow Law one too, so you can see how much colder it is up there!
The UK Met Office Blog
The official blog of the Met Office News Team. The team blog about all things weather, including hot topics, weather reports, weather extremes, climate change, awards, biographies and statistics. If you want the real story, rather than the sensationalised stuff peddled by our national press, look here first.
Met Office Digital Library
The UK Met Office has now digitised a lot of it’s historical weather documents and made them available as pdf files, on their digital library pages. Available are Monthly Weather Reports, Snow Surveys, British Rainfall records and many more.