We just got back from a tour of Fraser Cemetery on a wonderful warm Sunday afternoon, and there were many comments about the weather. People in our city have always enjoyed hearing stories of weather and extremes. Massive snowfalls, cold conditions that saw the Fraser River freeze, and tales of horsedrawn wagons carrying supplies using the frozen river as a road are favourites.
The name of Capt. Adolphus Peele stands out in New Westminster's past, as he was an avid watcher and recorder of the local weather.
Frequently the local newspaper included a comment from Peele in which he would pass along a weather anecdote or statistic, usually related to current conditions or time of year. The early local newspapers also made a habit of reporting on the weather and not with just the typical notation about the current conditions or what was expected to arrive. The papers would often recount comments from people who were elsewhere in the area or even throughout the province. We sometimes read short items in old papers about someone noticing "snow already appearing on the mountain passes" or "the valley is suffering from too much rain" or similar personal observations. This was a vital part of their early communication systems.
One hundred and fifty years ago in 1862, the Royal Engineers collected weather data here and reported it at regular intervals, with those reports sometimes reaching the pages of the British Columbian newspaper. The following is from a cumulative report on the weather from March 1862.
The maximum temperature in the shade at 9 a.m. was 74.2 degrees F (23.4 C ) on July 9, 1861. The minimum temperature at 9 am was 20 F (-6.7 C) on Jan. 21. There was a frosty night on May 20 and then none until Oct. 20. They had thunder and lightning on May 27 and on Aug. 5, 21, 22, and 29. The prevailing direction of the wind during rain in both 1860 and 1861 was from the east or south east. There is much more of interest in the report - perhaps we'll look at more in a later column.
