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- [00:01]
Emily Gracie
Picture this. The year is 1863 and Union forces are marching toward Pennsylvania unprepared for the scorching heat that would SAP their strength before they even reach the battlefield. Then, after three days of devastating conflict, Confederate forces try to retreat south, only to find their escape delayed by flooded rivers from unexpected rainfall. Artillery crews on both sides are struggling with forces of nature that no one was measuring when Dr. John Neese first joined us on off the Radar. He open our eyes to the weather's role of the battle of Gettysburg. But that was just the beginning. Dr. Neis has since uncovered a remarkable cache of weather data that reveals how the atmosphere shaped not just those three days in July, but the entire Gettysburg campaign.
- [00:48]
Dr. John Neese
I'm thinking to myself, well, this is fabulous. We can take the best technology available, bring in what few observations they had, you can rebuild sort of a best guess weather map.
- [01:01]
Emily Gracie
This week, Dr. Knees joins us again for a deep dive into the 160-year-old weather records that don't just tell us about the past. They remind us of just how much we depend on our modern weather observation network. Every automated station, every weather balloon, every satellite reading we take for granted today. They're the guardians of information that armies once fought and died without know. I'm meteorologist Emily Gracey and you're listening to off the Radar, a production of the National Weather Desk. On the show, we dig deep into topics about weather, climate, the ocean, space and much more. Our goal is to help you better understand the weather and to love it as much as we do.
- [01:45]
Richard Karn
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- [02:03]
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- [02:14]
Copperhead.Com welcome to off the Radar.
- [02:17]
Emily Gracie
Today I'm joined with Dr. John Neese who co authored a fascinating book called the Weather Gods Curse the Gettysburg Campaign. He wrote it with a historian named Jeff Harding and they have uncovered a treasure trove of weather data from an unexpected source that gives us an unprecedented window into those crucial days in July of 1863. We'll explore how different weather elements affected everything about the Gettysburg campaign. We'll discover the surprising place where Dr. Neis found the meteorological evidence that brings this story to life and discuss why his deep dive into 160-year-old weather records serves as a powerful reminder of just how critical reliable weather observation is in our modern world. If you heard my podcast interview with Dr. Knees last year, everything you hear today is new and interesting. And if you haven't heard it, keep listening here right now, but go back and look for it to get even more background on things like the wet bulb globe temperature and how soldiers felt during the battle. I hope everyone had a great holiday weekend. Please enjoy this deep dive into our country's history with John Neese.
- [03:28]
Unknown
Dr. John Neese, glad to have you back on. I have this very exciting thing in.
- [03:32]
Emily Gracie
My hand right here.
- [03:33]
Jeff Harding
It's your book that looks familiar.
- [03:35]
Dr. John Neese
I have one of those, too.
- [03:37]
Unknown
This is exciting because last year this time we were sitting here talking about this and this was in the works. And now it's here, it's published, it's done. This is very exciting and exciting for me because we're going to give a deeper dive into not just the battle of Gettysburg, but the whole campaign. We're going to get a little American history from you here as well, which I bet you've learned a lot about over the past couple of years.
- [03:57]
Dr. John Neese
I have. My, my father, American history in high school, would be very proud.
- [04:02]
Unknown
Oh, that's amazing. What a great combination of weather and history for you. All right, so let's talk about your book for one. But I also want to go back and talk about how this all got started. Have you always been this history buff or especially interested in this particular part of American history? Why did you start studying this?
- [04:21]
Dr. John Neese
Well, the overlap of weather with history.
- [04:23]
Jeff Harding
Has always fascinated me.
- [04:25]
Dr. John Neese
Taking you back 25 years, I was at the Franklin Institute Science Museum in Philadelphia. We would do little one minute features for the local PBS station, and Gettysburg weather during the Civil War was one of them. And that sort of got me interested. And that blossomed into something I did when I was at the Weather Channel about the intersection of weather and the battle. And then out of the blue, I got a call from a licensed Gettysburg battlefield guide back in 2018 who ends up being my co author, Jeffrey Harding. And he asked me some questions about the weather during the battle that people want to know. What, what did it really feel like? And so we went to work.
- [05:03]
Unknown
Okay, so you got partnered up with Jeff and you started working on this book and When I talked to you last year, we kind of dug into the battle itself. But can we start a little bit more at the beginning and what happened at the beginning of the campaign, and then each step of the way, how weather impacted it. So let's start with moving north and what happened there.
- [05:23]
Dr. John Neese
Well, the armies were congregated in the vicinity of Fredericksburg, Virginia in early June of 1863. That's when Lee decided to make his move and come north. And so we started on June 3, 1863, which is considered the beginning of the campaign. And we looked at the weather as best we could every day for the next 42 days, which takes us to July 14, which was the day when Lee finally recrossed the Potomac to get back into Southern territory. So we looked at the entire 42 day period and it featured some really interesting weather, some of which was known a little bit about. I mean, they knew there was a big heat wave June 15th through 18th, but nobody knew how hot it was really. We looked for as much data as we could to validate and quantify the soldier, what the soldier said about that heat wave. And then there's a lot of interest in the retreat. Lee was unable to recross the Potomac because the river was too high. And there was very scanty observations about precipitation out in the area where they recrossed. And so we did our best to try to figure out how much rain fell.
- [06:27]
Unknown
What were weather instruments like in 1863?
- [06:31]
Dr. John Neese
So the quality differed. It depends on where you got your instrumentation. At that time, the Smithsonian was running a network of observers, and there were sort of like three or four levels of observers. There were the observers who didn't have any instruments, so they basically reported the rain started at 2:00'. Clock. Then there were observers who had thermometers and pretty good thermometers. Mercury, mercury thermometers. There were observers who had barometers, and then there were observers who had the humidity instrument, the psychrometer, which helps you get a sense of the relative humidity and the dew point, those things which are of interest to meteorologists. So it depended on where you were. We ended up mining data from the Naval observatory in Washington, D.C. which was sort of, at that time, state of the art. And nobody had really used that data to apply to the Civil War. And they observed, get this eight times a day, every three hours, pressure temperature, something called the wet bulb temperature, which enables you to get humidity. They even had a thermometer sitting a couple inches above the grass in the sun so you could get A sense of what it felt like to be outside in the sun, near the ground, like a soldier might be. So and so that ended up, I think, being the biggest part of what we used in terms of new data. And then there were observers in places such as Frederick, Maryland.
- [08:02]
Jeff Harding
There really were no observers in Virginia.
- [08:05]
Dr. John Neese
Civil War started.
- [08:07]
Jeff Harding
And we had observations from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, as well, which helped a lot because Harrisburg is only 35 miles from Gettysburg.
- [08:15]
Unknown
Okay, so how do you do it? Do you throw all this stuff on a map and then just kind of extrapolate and figure out what was going on in each location?
- [08:21]
Dr. John Neese
You know what? You nailed it. I mean, I got some Civil War maps that Jeff helped me locate that showed where the troops were every day between June 3 and July 14. I took those maps to my local printer and I blew them up, like, 3ft by 2ft. And then I just started plotting soldier comments and weather data on these maps. You know as well as I do how much that helps. We sort of need to see it.
- [08:48]
Jeff Harding
All laid out in front of us.
- [08:50]
Dr. John Neese
And then I think the other innovation we brought to the campaign is that noaa, the national oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, actually has a computer program that can rebuild what the. The best guess at what the weather maps would have looked like every three hours. Get this going back to 1836. It's an online tool. And so I'm thinking to myself, well, this is fabulous. We can take the best technology available, bring in what few observations they had. You can rebuild sort of a best guess weather map. And so we used those, and we published a bunch of them in the book in color, surface maps and maps at 500 millibars, right up around 20,000ft. And so we tried to incorporate that into explaining what the soldiers were observing and to sort of validate it. And that was really fun. So this is kind of like, to me, a meteorological forensic puzzle.
- [09:57]
Unknown
Yeah. And I love how you explained it in the book, how it's like computer modeling, but instead of going forward, you're going backwards.
- [10:05]
Emily Gracie
Interesting.
- [10:06]
Dr. John Neese
So it's kind of a forensic analysis. And kudos to Noah. I mean, folks, think of noaa. Oh, yeah, that's the National Weather Service. But we know how important NOAA is to meteorological science in this country, and kudos to them for making this publicly available.
- [10:23]
Unknown
I'm hearing a lot about what Jeff got out of you and what he learned about the weather, but I'm curious about what you got from Jeff and kind of these personal stories that maybe he helped you put together the weather puzzle as well.
- [10:36]
Dr. John Neese
The appreciation for what these soldiers endured.
- [10:40]
Jeff Harding
Basically living their lives outside almost all the time, is what I took most from this endeavor.
- [10:48]
Dr. John Neese
Jeff compiled a word document that, when I first got hold of it, was.
- [10:53]
Jeff Harding
More than 400 pages long of soldier quotes.
- [10:57]
Dr. John Neese
So Jeff knows how to mine the Civil War diaries, all those sources where the soldiers may have published their information. And many of them did. And of course, a lot of their comments were about what they were wearing, how bad the food was, but a lot of them were about the weather. And so what Jeff brought to me.
- [11:18]
Jeff Harding
Was this down home, local approach to.
- [11:22]
Dr. John Neese
What the soldiers were feeling. And you know, when you read their comments, sometimes the weather that they report doesn't necessarily agree. I mean, there would be some days where I'd be writing on my maps, this soldier said it was hot and sticky, but this soldier said it was good for marching. And they're within 20 miles of each other. And I'm thinking, okay, why would that be? Well, you know, partly cloudy day in summer. Maybe over here it feels okay. And so I took that appreciation from Jeff. Jeff is also a extremely knowledgeable Civil War historian buff. And yeah, the personal stories we have.
- [12:02]
Jeff Harding
About the one Medal of Honor recipient who received the medal because he saved a soldier who had sunstroke and he stayed with this soldier even under enemy fire and got him to safety. We have a story in the book about a gentleman who owned a vineyard in Front Royal, Virginia, and his son was killed in the war mere miles from their home. I mean, such sadness. And we have some vignettes about some of the observers, everyday people who just decided, yeah, I'll be an observer. I'll be an observer for the Smithsonian Institution. A couple in Sykesville, Maryland, who dutifully observed during the Civil War. You know, the guy who observed in Gettysburg, he was a professor at Pennsylvania College, which is now Gettysburg College. One of the observers in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, was a medical doctor. So there really are some good stories in our book. As well as documenting the impact of the weather on the soldiers, can you.
- [13:03]
Unknown
Give me a little overview of what the weather was like during the battle?
- [13:07]
Dr. John Neese
Well, during the battle, those three days, it got progressively warmer and more humid. The peak of the heat was on.
- [13:14]
Jeff Harding
The third day of the battle, July 3, 1863.
- [13:16]
Dr. John Neese
We know the temperature based on the observer in Gettysburg was 87 degrees at 2pm that day. He only observed three times a day, 9am, 2pm, 9pm so we don't really know what the high was. But based on extrapolating information from Washington, D.C. harrisburg, Pennsylvania, we believe the heat index at the peak of the heat on July 3, which would have coincided with the very famous Pickett's Charge, which was the culmination of the Confederate attempt to defeat the Union at Gettysburg, and it failed. We feel pretty confident the heat index was 100 or higher. And of course, a lot of the soldiers were laying in the sun for three hours. So we know it can feel 10 to 15 degrees hotter in the sun. Some of them are prone on the ground. So we can extrapolate from Washington, D.C. that sort of temperature out in the sun a couple inches above the ground, what it might have felt like in Gettysburg. It could have felt to the soldiers who were prone on the ground in the sun in excess of 130 degrees. And they're in their uniforms and they're not necessarily well fed or well hydrated. So the peak of the heat was definitely on the third, the last day of the battle. And then once the battle ended, it rained a lot. And that made it hard, and that made it hard for Lee to retreat and for me to follow.
- [14:38]
Unknown
Yeah, tell me about the river. In trying to cross the river right.
- [14:42]
Dr. John Neese
When we know when the Confederate army, Lee's army, came north and crossed the Potomac, of course they knew where to cross. They knew where the river was lowest, and a lot of them crossed near Williamsport, Maryland. And we know from soldier accounts that when they crossed the first time, the water was maybe up to their knees or their hips. So we know that the water was a couple feet deep. But when the Confederates tried to retreat back to Williamsport, Maryland, a few of them got across on July 4th and July 5th. But then the river got too high. And as best we can tell, it may have peaked at 15 to 20ft. And you're not crossing a river. Fording is the word they use. You're not fording a river with your artillery when the river's that high. So Lee was effectively trapped in Williamsport, Maryland for the better part of five, six, seven, eight days until the river fell. And they were not able to finally get across until the night of July 13, the morning of the 14th, and the last Confederate soldiers crossed the river back to the safety of, of the southern side of the river by around lunchtime on July 14, 1863. And that's when the. That's when the story of the Gettysburg campaign ends.
- [15:51]
Unknown
Which part of the campaign do you think was most impacted by weather?
- [15:54]
Dr. John Neese
The armies endured a four day heat wave from June 15 to June 18, 1863, when they were primarily still in Virginia, that once I started looking at the data that was available, comparing that data to modern day statistics. We came to the conclusion that this heat wave from June 15th to 18th was historic in nature in terms of June heat waves in that part of the country. I mean the, the high temperature in Washington D.C. which is not where the soldiers were, but it's close enough that an extrapolation is, is not a stretch, exceeded 93 degrees for four consecutive days. The dew points were in the 70s. Most of the time, you know, you do that heat index calculation, you're in the 100 and teens for heat indices at least one or two of those days. And so I dug up hourly data from the two airports, downtown Washington D.C. and then Dulles, which are not all that far from where many of the troops were. And I looked at hourly data back to 1962 and asked a very simple question. How often does the heat index get that high in modern day in those places and you just don't find it? We make the argument to answer your question, Reader's Digest version is it was the period from the 15th to the 18th where sunstroke was rampant. I mean, when you look at the statistics, the medical statistics, I don't have them at my fingertips now, but you're talking about hundreds of soldiers falling out from sunstroke. The misery was not equally divided between the two armies because it turns out that Lee's army mostly rested during that heat wave because they were already far enough north that they were where they wanted to be. But the Union army had fallen behind. And so the Union, many of the divisions of the Union army went on forced marches during that heat wave. We remark in the book what General Hooker wouldn't have given for a good seven day forecast. Because you know as well as I do today, if you have a seven day forecast, which generally speaking, even days four, five, six and seven, we generally are in the ballpark, right? If I told you that it was going to be 93 degrees or hotter for four consecutive days, you are not going to plan on marching your armies 20 to 25 miles a day during that period. You're going to rest. But the Union didn't have the advantage of a weather forecast and they needed to march to catch up to Lee.
- [18:24]
Unknown
Interesting. Is there any part of the story that you thought, huh, history would have been different if the forecast had been something that they knew about?
- [18:35]
Dr. John Neese
Deciding the impact on history is a tough one, but certainly if they had modern weather forecasts, even reasonably accurate forecasts, and that had been worked into the planning, there's absolutely no doubt that the Union could have conserved some energy during that heat wave. With this new information about the weather, historians can now continue to debate. So it becomes sort of our contribution is to paint the weather picture. And now other historians may want to use what we did to think about the question you just asked.
- [19:15]
Unknown
Was there any part of this in the research that caught you off guard that you were really surprised by?
- [19:20]
Jeff Harding
To be honest, I was kind of surprised that as best I can tell, I am the first actual degreed meteorologist to author or co author a book on Gettysburg. And that kind of surprised me because it seems to me that a niche that needed to be filled. I was kind of surprised that no one had ever used this rich data set from the Naval observatory in Washington D.C. and applied it to the Civil War because the armies were not that far from Washington D.C. and you know as well as I do in the summer, whether you're in Northern Virginia, 60 miles southwest of D.C. or you're in.
- [20:06]
Dr. John Neese
D.C. it feels about the same much of the time. Right.
- [20:10]
Jeff Harding
And so I was kind of surprised that no one had done this. But as best I can tell, and it's a very rich data set filled with all kinds of neat information and commentary, making comments about thunderstorms and lightning.
- [20:26]
Dr. John Neese
And I was also surprised when I dug into the data to learn how.
- [20:30]
Jeff Harding
Little data there really was in Northern.
- [20:34]
Dr. John Neese
Virginia, in Virginia as a whole and what we now consider to be West Virginia. That whole space when you look at. Because we plotted like a little dot on the map for where we had data and there's this big hole and it's called Virginia in West Virginia.
- [20:51]
Jeff Harding
I guess if I'd thought about it critically. Well, it's a Civil War. They got better things to do. They're not going to be observing weather, right?
- [20:59]
Unknown
Come on, make it a priority.
- [21:02]
Dr. John Neese
No, you and I think about weather observations in a different way. We in modern times, we take them for granted. We know that they're reliable and that quality control is good. This is another thing about the weather observations from the Naval Observatory. The gentleman who we profile in the book, John Roby Eastman, who took most of them, was just a high caliber scientist. And for that reason the Naval Observatory data really stood out as a high quality record.
- [21:39]
Unknown
Dr. Neese, is there anything else you want to add about your book? Where can we find it? When is it coming out? When are you going to sign my copy?
- [21:48]
Dr. John Neese
Next time we're together. The book comes out officially June 10th. I feel very blessed to have been invited with my co author Jeffrey Harding to speak in Gettysburg on July 5th this year in something called the Sacred Trust, which is sponsored by the Gettysburg Foundation. Every year they invite three, four or five speakers back. And if you spend two hours of.
- [22:11]
Jeff Harding
Your day on the battlefield with Mr.
- [22:14]
Dr. John Neese
Jeffrey Harding, you are going to be.
- [22:17]
Jeff Harding
In for a treat. You will get chills at what he knows and how he can bring those three hellish days in Gettysburg to life for anyone who's interested in a deeper dive. And so I know Jeff would extend an invitation to you, Emily, to meet in Gettysburg sometime.
- [22:39]
Unknown
I'd be honored. That's awesome. John Neese, thank you so much for your time today. Once again, this was a great learning experience. This book is great. I encourage everybody to get it.
- [22:49]
Jeff Harding
Thank you.
- [22:50]
Dr. John Neese
Appreciate it.
- [22:52]
Emily Gracie
Off the Radar is a production of the National Weather Desk. Make sure you're of full following the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. New episodes publish every Tuesday. Thank you to Dr. John Neese for joining me today. His book the Weather Gods Curse the Gettysburg Campaign is out now, so go get your coffee. Thanks to the National Weather Desk and Sinclair Broadcast Group for their ongoing support of the podcast, as well as my associate producer Brian Petras for his help on today's episode. Next week, Brian will be guest hosting an episode and it's all about sharks. So make sure you hit the subscribe button and listen to that before your next beach trip. I'm meteorologist Emily Gracie. Make it a great day.