The first Europeans to settle the New World didn't know much about what they were getting into, but they thought they had the climate figured out. Hi, I'm Dave Thurlow and this is The Weather Notebook. Natural philosophers of the day were convinced that climate depended solely on the angle of the sun above the horizon, or, in other words, latitude. A simple measurement from horizon to midday sun revealed that Massachusetts had the same weather as Rome and that Virginia replicated conditions in North Africa.

A single North American winter dashed that idea. Two-thirds of the original Jamestown colonists died in the frigid winter of 1607-8. In 1620, as the Pilgrims braced for the onset of their first winter at Plymouth Colony, future governor William Bradford worried about rumors of "sharp and violent" weather and "cruel and fierce storms." Even fiercer, as the colonists soon discovered, were the late summer storms -- tempests so powerfully strange that the English had to import a West Indian word to describe this meteorological beast: the hurricane.

It wasn't long, however, before settlers went from marveling at the ferocity of the New World's weather to singing its praising. "Here is an extraordinarie cleere and dry aire that is of a most healing nature," Francis Higginson wrote from Massachusetts in 1630. And William Wood boasted in 1634 that New England "is for certain the best ground and sweetest climate in all those parts...agreeing well with the temper of our English bodies."

Many factors come into play in the transformation of colonial settlers into a people with a distinct identity, but surely, weather is one of the most crucial. Well before they were prepared to declare political independence, the European transplants had declared their meteorological independence and became fierce partisans of America's bracing, unpredictable weather.

Today's writer is David Laskin. Thanks to Subaru and the National Science Foundation.

Related Links

A brief history of Jamestown - Association for the Preservation of Virginia Antiquities

The Bradford Journal - Pilgrim Hall Museum, Plymouth, MA

BRAVING THE ELEMENTS - David Laskin "The Stormy History of American Weather" Weather and climate aren't just scientific abstractions -- they affect many parts of our lives, and of our history. In this book, David Laskin takes a look at how weather and climate have affected the history of the United States, and how residents of this land have reacted to heat and cold, flood and drought, storm and sunshine. Fascinating reading!