Patrik Naindenel

It was birthday recently. I received quite an interesting thing from Diana’s parents. When her father was helping his sister to clean out her house, they found this strange tool. He thought that would be a perfect present to me. Specially with our vision/dream about purchasing a sailing catamaran one day and sail around the globe.

The “thing” I received was something called “Storm Glass Barometer” and it is a beautiful looking equipment which should predict the weather for you. The Barometer was invented during the 18th century. Then tested by Admiral Fitzroy in 1831. . Robert Fitzroy (nickname: “Hot Coffee”) set out on a voyage to chart the coasts of South America. On board during this voyage was the young naturalist Charles Darwin. Fitzroy had a keen interest in meteorology and attempted to quantify the exact nature of storm glass. His observations eventually led to a standard script printed on many storm glasses, such as “A cloudy glass with small stars indicates thunderstorms” and “If there are crystals at the bottom, this indicates frost“.

In October 1859 a huge storm, the greatest in living memory, struck the British Isles. The clipper Royal Charter. On her way from Melbourne packed with returning gold miners, Sunk with the loss of 459 lives. As were some 200 other ships. It was a national disaster. In response, Fitzroy pushed for the establishment of weather stations around the nation’s coasts to monitor atmospheric conditions. Storm glasses were distributed to fishing villages, earning them the name “Fitzroy’s Barometers”. In fact, it was Fitzroy who coined the term “weather forecast” in the course of his initiative.

I will keep an eye on it, to see if it really works as described. I will keep an update here about the outcome and in case it works it will be a perfect tool to use, together with a common Barometer.

In case it does not work it will still be a beautiful object hanging on the wall, to look at.

This picture says how to read the Storm Glass Barometer.