Columns — monthly fall
Every bay is one calendar month. Its column rises from the recorded total, so a wet January cannot hide behind an annual average.
40 years, one catchment
The Ledger
of Small
Weather
An architectural record of every wet year at Alder Vale — a narrow valley where rain keeps the fields green, the beck audible, and the old stone dry enough to last.
40annual ledgers
40,604millimetres logged
1valley gauge
20241,127 mm recorded
A rainfall cathedral: twelve columns represent the selected year’s monthly rainfall, arches show concentrated wet periods, four flying buttresses compare the seasonal totals, the rose window shows the monthly distribution, and the central portal responds to March rain. Use the year scrubber to rebuild the selected year.
1985 / driest opening2024 / last ledger
Why a cathedral?
Because a year of rain has weight, rhythm, and rooms inside it.
Since 1985, the rain gauge behind Alder Vale’s parish hall has been read at eight each morning. The numbers started as pencil marks in a green hardback. They now describe a shared climate: lambing weeks delayed by sleet, August storms that lifted the beck, and a 1995 summer when the gauge barely needed emptying.
The ledger treats no month as background. Twelve columns carry the year; their height follows the rainfall total. The wettest month bends the central arch, and the rose window divides the annual fall into its seasonal character.
Marginal notes
Years the valley still remembers.
Click a year to take it back to the drawing board above. These are not records alone; they are the years neighbours use as weather shorthand.
- First complete book893 mm
- The quietest summer782 mm
- November at the doorstep1,309 mm
- The soaked Jubilee field1,402 mm
- Last ink in the book1,127 mm
Averaged from forty ledgers
Open a month under glass.
The ordinary year has a familiar rhythm. Choose a bay, then inspect how that same month rose and fell across forty ledgers.
October / forty ledgers
1985one stave = one year2024
The rain transept
October, 2024.
A late-autumn reading from the last ledger.
Values in millimetres. Choose a tall silver stave to change the reading; use the brass control to return that year to the cathedral. Source: Alder Vale manual gauge, daily readings compiled by the parish ecology group.
Reading the stones
A record built to be compared, not merely admired.
The structure is deliberately legible. A viewer can return to the same twelve bays each year, see the change in the roofline, and understand at a glance whether the rain arrived steadily or in a handful of heavy months.
Arches — concentration
High arches mark years where rain arrived in a few hard spells. A lower, broader nave belongs to a more evenly wet year.
Rose window — seasonal share
Twelve pieces of tracery follow the month’s share of the year. The brass centre expands with the annual total.