Family history researchers can now use a free website to explore how extreme weather would have affected the lives of their ancestors over a 500-year period.
The Tempest Database at www.nottingham.ac.uk/geography/extremeweatherhas been created as part of an AHR- funded project, ‘Spaces of Experience and Horizons of Expectation’: Extreme weather in the UK, past, present and future (2013-2016). The resource represents research material gathered by a project team made up of researchers from the University of Nottingham, Aberystwyth University, University of Glasgow and University of Liverpool.
The historical narrative accounts on extreme weather events contained within Tempest were extracted from a wide range of archival documents – including letters, diaries, church records, school log-books, newspaper cuttings and photographs – held in repositories in five UK case study regions: Central England, South-West England, East Anglia, Wales and North-West Scotland.