Coast Survey Steamer BIBB as sketched by Xanthus Smith. BIBB served as pilot vessel, survey vessel, dispatch vessel, and combatant. Spent most of the Civil War with the South Atlantic Blockading Squadron. Thomas Jefferson showed not only a strong interest in monitoring the weather, but also looked at changes in the climate. Both heats and colds are becoming much more moderate within the memory even of the middle-aged.
Snows are less frequent and less deep.
They do not often lie, below the mountains, more than one, two, or three days, and very rarely a week. They are remembered to have been formerly frequent, deep, and of long continuance. The elderly inform me, the earth used to be covered with snow about three months in every year. The rivers, which then seldom failed to freeze over in the course of the winter, scarcely ever do so now. There was a short-lived warming trend beginning with the extremely cold winter of 1758 and extending to about 1784, just when Jefferson was writing.