Our Ancestors' Weather

With some of us dealing with unusually cold temperatures (-11°F this morning south of Pittsburgh!), I thought it would be appropriate to post this 1912 article that I found on Newspapers.com:

The Daily Notes (Canonsburg, PA), January 13, 1912

"With thermometers standing at from 16 to 20 degrees below zero, the mercury Saturday morning registered the lowest in thirteen years. Last evening the temperature marked a few degrees above zero, and the Pittsburg weather office promised a minimum temperature for the night of about five below zero. But there was a steady lowering of the temperature during the night, and this morning when people looked at the thermometer and found the mercury extending but a fraction of an inch above the little glass bulb they rubbed their eyes to see it [sic] they had read aright. The drop in twelve hours was about 20 degrees.

The coldest place in the neighborhood of Canonsburg this morning was McConnells Mills, where thermometers marked as low as 34 degrees below zero. At the store of G. H. Challener the mercury crawled down into the little bulb, the instrument being made to mark only as low as about 30 degrees below. Hickory reported 30 below; Houston, 28 and  30; the pump station near Linden, 27 below."