The records of John Fletcher Miller reach the limelight at last. And, lo!, they are even more interesting than that seminal Whitehaven work, Lamposts I have knownWhitehaven's record office contains many wonderful documents in the miles of shelving in its vaults. Vaults that once housed prisoners when they were used as the cells of Whitehaven police station. Lamp posts I have known by Peter Richardson is one of my favourite books in the archives, with a detailed and valuable historical account of almost every lamp post in the town. There's also the single sheet headed, List of Deaths taken from the Parish of Lamplugh from Janry ye 1, 1658 to Janye ye 1, 1663. It includes:* Took cold sleeping at church: 11* Frighted to death by Fairies: 4* Died of a fright in a Exercise of ye traind bands: 1* Mrs Lamplugh's cordial water: 2* Bewitched: 7and so forth.But in July the remarkable work of John Fletcher Miller (1816 - 1856) receives some long overdue publicity. At the age of 15, John Miller realised his ill health would not allow him to pursue a medical career and chose instead to keep a daily detailed log of the weather in the Lake District. This he continued until his death at the age of 40.It's not just the day-by-day measurement of rainfall, cloud cover, rainbows and storms that are worthy of mention. It's also the beautiful calligraphy with which he wrote up his logs. There is page after page of italic script describing in wonderful language the "mizzling rain", "gleamings" of sunshine and "prismatic solar halos". For example:July 13th 1852 - Very vivid and almost incessant sheet lightning (horizontal) from sunset till after daylight, the heavens being in a perfect blaze.He was also something of a 'Fortean'. You will recall Charles Fort was the 19th century collector of 'the damned' - those falls of frogs, fishes spontaneous fire, levitation and other unexplained data which he felt science chose to ignore. Years before Fort started his mountain of newspaper cuttings, Miller was collecting at first-hand accounts of meteors, strange aerial phenomena, particularly destructive lightning strikes, the first appearance of butterflies in the spring and - something for which Guardian readers will be particularly appreciative - the first cuckoos. They seemingly always put in a first appearance around April 21st. Miller was living not far from Borrowdale where legend has it that the locals tried in the past to build a wall across the valley to prevent the cuckoo flying away and thereby ensure an 'eternal spring'. When the cuckoo flew over the wall, the Borrowdale wall-builder cursed that he had not built it a couple of feet higher!But I digress. Here's a description by Miller of a particularly violent lightning strike in May 1850:At Westfield House, near Bowness, Carlisle, Mrs Harrison and the servant-man were milking the cows during the storm, when the electric fluid struck the man dead on the spot, killing four cows at the same time. The stool upon which Mrs H was sitting was literally, split in two and she was thrown to a considerable distance by the violence of the shock. Strange to say, not the slightest mark was found to be on the man or the cattle. The storm was not felt at Whitehaven. which is peculiarly exempted from thunder-storms.He built his own observatory in Whitehaven and seemed to spend as many nights as he did days recording events in the sky. His description of a meteor on 27 April 1851 even included a drawing (though its fair to say his talent lay in the writing rather than drawing):-About 10hr 5min being in the observatory my attention was attracted by a sudden blaze of light illuminating the sky and on reaching the open air, I perceived a very large comet-shaped meteor proceeding from the head of Draco through Cassiopea, but I did not see it more than a couple of seconds. The meteor greatly resembled a rocket. Its body might be one and half degrees in length and it was followed by a long and brilliant train of bluish-coloured sparks. Its light exceed that of a the full moon and I feel assured moderate sized print might have easily been read by it. It was seen at 10pm in the neighbourhood of Manchester, Rochdale and other places. It was followed by repeated flashes of lightning.We think that we are experiencing extreme weather these days, with barely a month going by that some fall of rain or heatwave is not the best or worst "since records began". But a quick look at Mr Miller's records suggests that 19th century weather was just as varied and extreme as today. In January 1850 for instance he reports:Sharp frost set in on the 6th and continued till the 22d, during which period there was fine skating on Bassenthwaite Lake. A stag was roasted on its margin and a tea party assembled on the ice.It would be wrong to dismiss Miller as an eccentric. He had five papers on Rain Fall in the Lake District published by the Royal Society and he became a fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society. He was a founder of the British (now Royal) Meteorological Society.The original volumes of Mr Miller's data will be on display at Whitehaven Archive and Local Studies Centre in Scotch Street, Whitehaven, during the first week of July. Admission is free. The offices are just round the corner from Miller's former High Street home - a blue plaque marking the building. And even if you don't share an interest in annual rainfall figures or first cuckoos the beautiful script contained within the hand-bound books held tight with gold clasps will at least remind you of that stress-free age before typewriters, laptops and ebooks.Alan Cleaver is a freelance journalist and author living in Whitehaven.You can watch a slideshow about another amazing Lake District weatherman here.WeatherMuseumsMuseumsLibrariesLake DistrictWhitehavenRoyal SocietyAstronomyguardian.co.uk © 2012 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. 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