Richard Towneley - Systematic Rainfall Measurement

Systematic Rainfall Measurement

In 1977, British meteorologists celebrated the tercentenary of the start of systematic rainfall recording in the British Isles by Richard Towneley. Towneley began making regular measurements of rainfall in January 1677 and published records of monthly rainfall for 15 years from that time in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society in 1694. In the report, Towneley described the measurements in great detail "to show you how little trouble there is to this task; which therefore I hope some of your ingenious friends may be persuaded to undertake". He wrote that at Towneley there was twice the quantity of rain that fell in Paris. He further claimed that the Eastern parts of Lancashire were subject to more rain than Yorkshire due to clouds driven by South West winds falling as rain on the high ground that divides the two counties. Towneley called for more measurements elsewhere to test the claim that his area had more rain than in other parts of the country. Only William Derham appears to have taken up Towneley's challenge and they jointly published the rainfall measurements for Towneley and Upminster in Essex for the years 1697 to 1704.

A local historian has suggested that Towneley was possibly prompted to maintain rainfall records in support of lime hushing activities on his land, however there is no hard evidence to support this conjecture. Rather there is evidence that Towneley had already expressed interest in measuring rainfall across different parts of England before 1677. In July 1676, Flamsteed promised Towneley he would take note of rainfall at Greenwich and expressed his opinion that "beyond Trent it is much more rainy than here". Flamsteed went as far as placing a rain gauge on an outhouse of the Observatory in 1677 but he never reported any measurements.