April showers to May flowers: weather in Clarke primary sources

 

Recent rainstorms and severe changes in weather, typical of Michigan springs, are occurring of late. We've gone from below freezing to nearly 70 in a day. Above is a view from my window this week. This got me thinking about weather of various kinds, rain, snow, sleet, hail, ice storms, floods, tornados, forest fires, etc., that are documented in the Clarke collections. We have books and articles about the weather, and weather is always found in newspapers and travel and tourism information. While the secondary sources discuss weather on land or aboard a vessel on the Great Lakes, our primary sources mainly focus on weather impacting the land. In our primary source collections weather most often is recorded in the diaries of farmers whose crop success depended on the weather. It is usually the first thing they note in each diary or journal entry. The second most likely place weather is recorded is in Civil War soldier's letters and diaries because they were usually outside marching, trying to sleep and fight in rain or hot sun, freezing in the winter with inadequate clothes and thin tents, unable to sleep under their rain soaked tents, their clothes or food rotting due to rain, they couldn't light a fire because of the rain, etc. Journals, diaries or letters describing people's travels, and their photograph albums also record the weather they encountered. All of these examples can be found in our catalog with a keyword search of "weather". Severe weather such as floods, ice, sleet, hail or major snow storms, and tornadoes are also documented in primary sources, but are rarer. If you search for those you need to keyword the specific term like "flood". While most of the primary sources are letters, diaries, or journals, there are handwritten accounts, government emergency plans, insurance records for homes, businesses, and maritime vessels, and Channel 9 & 10 News film footage documenting severe weather, filmed both from land and airplanes. With April showers comes May flowers. Here are magnolia blossoms from a tree planted near the CMU Park Library.