The storm that inspired weather forecasting

The Royal Charter Storm in 1859 led to the first weather forecasts

On 25th-26th October 1859, the Royal Charter and another 132 ships sank in a storm around the British & Irish Isles. More than 800 lives were lost, 450 of whom were onboard the Royal Charter.

This tragedy motivated Robert Fitzroy, who was in charge of the Meteorological Office, to build a network of weather stations around the UK at major fishing ports. Measurements were telegraphed to London every morning where they were used to make a weather forecast. If strong winds were deemed imminent a message would be sent back to the ports to warn ships.

The first official storm warning was issued in February 1861, and the first public weather forecast in August 1861, less than two years after the storm.

Arguably, the moment the Royal Charter sank off Anglesey in Wales was the moment that weather forecasting began.

And, for the first time, we have a credible reconstruction (or ‘reanalysis’) of what the storm looked like. A low pressure system was moving across the UK with strong winds all around the coast, especially in the Irish Sea.

This reanalysis was built using modern weather forecasting techniques, applied to a historical date, and is only possible because of 10s of amateurs who were recording the weather regularly in diaries, logbooks and newspapers which have fortunately survived.

A special thank you to, amongst others, a Mr H Eaton of Little Bredy in Dorset who realised a storm was happening and noted down measurements of pressure every hour.

Technical details: Reanalysis produced using the NOAA-CIRES 20th Century Reanalysis System, run on the UK supercomputer ARCHER2, assimilating the C3S GLAMODv7 pressure dataset with extra rescued observations added.