Das Wetter in Böhmen in den 30er und 40er Jahren des 18. Jahrhunderts in den Tagebüchern Tobias Anton Seemans

Abstract

The German diaries written by T. A. Seeman, the steward (Germ. Hofmeister) of the (Swéerts-) Sporcks, in 1730–1747 contain a wealth of meteorological observations. Although it was not the author’s main area of interest and the data are not recorded on a daily basis, they represent a new and valuable contribution to the documentation of the climate and its extremes in Bohemia of the pre-instrumental period of the first half of the 18th century. The diaries also contain a number of records of floods, of which the deluge of the late February 1732 reached a Central European scale. These records also enable us to evaluate winters: severe winters with plenty of snow were the winters of 1730/31 and 1731/32. On the other hand, the first months of 1735 and 1737 were relatively mild, and so was likely the winter of 1746/47.