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The Midnight Weather of Paul Revere
Mon Apr 18, 2005
Listen in RealAudio 
Listen my children and you shall hear
Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere,
On the eighteenth of April in ‘Seventy-five;
Hardly a man is now alive
Who remembers that famous day and year.
Hi, I’m Bryan Yeaton, and this is The Weather Notebook. The words of the Longfellow poem, Paul Revere’s Ride, ring in our heads like the neighborhood church bell, so familiar they are. Today, not a single soul is now alive who remembers that night, so, is it possible to know the weather conditions for not only Revere’s ride, along with William Dawes and Samuel Prescott, but for the battles the following day in Lexington and Concord?
For more than 150 years, historians believed no written record existed. But the late weather historian David Ludlam points out that the data were there all along, at Harvard University. Professor John Winthrop, descendent of the Massachusetts Bay founder and first governor, also named John Winthrop, kept detailed records from 1742 until 1779.
Using Winthrop’s observations, Ludlam determined that the showery conditions that had prevailed probably ended as a cold front passed through around noon on the 18th. The wind shifted to the west, and the skies cleared with the rising barometer. The moon rose at 10:48 p.m.; Revere himself recalled seeing the moon, and pleasant conditions around eleven o’clock, when the ride began.
At 6 a.m., the temperature was already up to 46 degrees, but would only get to 52 for the day. Other New England diarists confirmed that the 19th was a “fine day.”
But the significance of the day was not lost on John Winthrop, who wrote after his 1 p.m. reading: “Battle of Concord will put a stop to observing.”
Thanks to Doria Grimes of the NOAA Library for her help with the research. The Weather Notebook is supported by Subaru of America.
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