Page "Irish Famine (1740–1741)" Paragraph 2

Though no barometric or temperature readings for Ireland ( population in 1740 of 2. 4 million people ) survive from the Great Frost, English people were using the mercury thermometer invented 25 years earlier by the German pioneer Fahrenheit.

Indoor values during January 1740 were as low as.

The one outdoor reading that has survived was, not including the wind chill factor, which was severe.

This kind of weather was “ quite outside the Irish experience ,” notes David Dickson, author of Arctic Ireland: The Extraordinary Story of the Great Frost and Forgotten Famine of 1740-41.