One of the recurring themes in soldiers’ letters and diaries during the Civil War was the weather. It influenced their daily lives in camp, on the battlefield, and on the march.

Frederick Laubach of Montour County, Pennsylvania and others in the local Baldy Guards in the 93rd Pennsylvania Regiment, experienced some severe winter weather in early December of 1864.

His December 9th diary entry read: “The night was very cold. Reveille at 5 A.M. Pickets came in. Marched to Winchester (Virginia) without halting. From there to Stevenson Station. Our brigade was then detailed to escort the corps train to the Ferry. The rest of the division took the cars. While laying at the depot, they rallied on sutlers and whiskey and tore up the devil. In the evening it commenced to snow.

Laubach wrote the following day that he and other regiment members awoke to find themselves covered with ten inches of snow. Resuming their march, some of the soldiers had to pull artillery uphill by hand because the horses had given out due to the weather.

His December 11th diary entry was even more telling of the hardships endured during the winter of 1864. “Camped at Petersville for the night. It blew up very cold and we nearly perished. Some of the men froze to death. I have never suffered with cold so before. There was no way to keep warm.”

Certain civilian weather measurements have remained very useful for scholars of the Civil War. Perhaps best known, thanks to Robert K. Krick's book, Civil War Weather in Virginia, are the Reverend C. B. Mckee's (also spelled Mackee) dutiful recordings at Georgetown taken every day of the war, with few exceptions, at seven o'clock in the morning, two o'clock in the afternoon, and nine o'clock at night.

Weather records from the war were collected by the Smithsonian Institute and Army Signal Service until the creation of the Weather Bureau in 1891.