The Weather Observations Of Surgeon Menzies

[knocker]

I don't know whether this is of interest, or even if it has been posted before,

On Vancouver’s historic voyage around the world from 1791 to 1795, Archibald Menzies served as surgeon and naturalist. During the voyage, he kept a weather log, including in it observations of air temperature, sea-surface temperature, barometric pressure, wind direction and wind force (using terminology similar to that used by Admiral Beaufort a decade later in the first published version of his famous scale of wind force).

The log is important historically, for it includes the first weather observations ever made systematically along the west coast of North America (from Mexico to Alaska), among them observations made whilst at anchor at San Francisco and Monterey. The sheets on which Menzies recorded his observations have recently been returned to the archive of the Royal Meteorological Society. The story of how they came to be in the possession of the Society in the first place will be told in this presentation.

http://ams.confex.com/ams/Annual2005/techprogram/paper_83619.htm

http://ams.confex.com/ams/pdfpapers/83619.pdf