Weather eye on Paisley
Observatory houses its own meteorological station
The recent spell of great weather has been a boon after a very long, cold and snowy winter.
And every type of weather from blazing sunshine to deep minus temperatures have been recorded at Paisley’s Coats Observatory from the early 1880s.
In charge of the statistics today is Paisley Museum and Coats Observatory science curator John Pressly.
He said: “One of the things the observatory was set up to do, as well as look at the night sky, was to observe other phenomena.
“Thomas Coats, the founder of the observatory and museum, was actually a keen meteorologist and he’d done weather recording at Ferguslie House.
“We’ve got some of the equipment from Ferguslie House up here and some of the records, which is a bonus.
“So he gifted a barometer and some other recording equipment to the observatory when it opened and insisted that we carry that on, which we have done pretty much every day since, up until about seven years ago.
“Before then it was all done manually, so someone had to come in every single day and do the sunshine, the temperatures, the rainfall, the windspeed etc.
“But now we’ve got a little machine that does all of that for us.
“At the touch of a button I’ve got everything sitting in front of me.”
The “secret” garden in the museum and observatory complex was the location of the old recording equipment, and a fascinating old picture shows just what it was like.
Mr Pressly said: “To be honest, from the outset I think the weather was an area that was a bit easier to record.
“This place was probably the worst place to put an observatory really, in the middle of town, lots of chimneys, lots of smoke, not much to see in the sky.
“So the weather recording kept up the scientific credentials of the place.”
The modern automated equipment that records the weather is located on the balcony at the top of the observatory, a spot that has spectacular views across Paisley.
“It’s connected to a little box of tricks on my desk,” Mr Pressly added. “So basically, it can show what the current weather is doing at the moment. That’s the basics. From that I can do all sorts of things.
“I can run reports. So if I want to see what the weather was like all last month, I can do that.”
The weather information is kept for any members of the public who wish access to it. That can range from people wanting to know what the weather was like on the day they were born to insurance companies needing it to verify claims.
The stats can be checked back all the way to 1883, either in huge old ledgers or digitally. The service is free. When the observatory and museum closes in the autumn for a four-year multi-million pound refurbishment, the weather station will be relocated.
“Because of the development going on here, I don’t want it to end so we are going to move it to a former’s colleague house in Oakshaw Street – literally 100 yards down the road,” Mr Pressly said. “It will do the same as it does now.”