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Remarkable Thunderstorm at St. Keverne 1770


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Posted
  • Location: Camborne
  • Location: Camborne
Posted

I’m currently researching weather in Cornwall in the 18th and 19th centuries. I came across an account of a thunderstorm at St Keverne in 1770 written by the Rector of St. Keverne. It was in the form of a letter to William Borlase which he subsequently posted in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society.

 

Reverend William Borlase was a Cornishman by birth, and after gaining his MA from Oxford in 1719 and his ordination in 1720 he returned to assume the rectorate at Ludgvan, in west Cornwall. He became well known for his studies of Cornish natural history and antiquities and was acknowledged as a national authority on the weather.

 

From the 1750s to the 1770s Borlase published a number of papers on Cornish weather in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, of which he was a Fellow. His work conformed to the earlier meteoric tradition and many of his papers focused on particular meteoric events, such as one on the effects of lightning strikes on a house in the village of Gulval in 1752. Borlase also kept daily records of the weather and had no difficulty in reconciling the importance of isolated reports and synoptic monitoring.

 

The attached is a copy of the letter. The church in question was 15th century. Any guesses as to the synoptic analysis.

St Keverne thunderstorm.pdf

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