How many of us over the last week have not shuddered as winter bites back and how many of us as historians have not given thought to how our ancestors coped with adverse weather conditions or even survived them?

At Intriguing History, we obviously explore a great number of historical events and we often wonder what role the weather had in swaying the course of history of these events.

• Some weather conditions are well recorded for example, we know the Spanish Amarda was scattered by storms in the English Channel, making them easy to attack. How different might the outcome have been otherwise.
• Crop failures due to extreme weather caused great suffering, resulting in premature deaths or even in the extreme case, migration as in Ireland.
• In family history looking at historic weather patterns adds some real flavour to your historical content.

It’s not an exact science but there are a couple of historic weather sites that are great fun to explore.

Meteorology at West Moors where you can choose to explore the weather from a timeline of dates
Another thing you can do is look at old newspapers and read the daily weather columns.

For example, find out what the weather was like on the day your great, great, grandparents married the possibilities are endless!

See how we use this resource in one of our Intriguing Connections sites