Mapping Anthropogenic Weather
Project Overview
I worked on a digital humanities project exploring the history of “weather shooting,” a practice that emerged in parts of Europe around the turn of the twentieth century, where communities used cannons in an attempt to prevent or disperse hailstorms. The project supports my supervisor’s ongoing research and book project by turning this historical material into an interactive companion website. I developed the site using React and LeafletJS, with a focus on making the research more accessible and engaging for a wider audience. The website features an interactive map, layered historical data, and supporting text that allows users to move between the narrative and the visual material. Users can explore where and when different hail cannons were installed, compare locations across years, and gain a clearer sense of how widespread and organized this phenomenon became.
What are the key results of your research project?
The outcome was a React.js website that presents the research through a more visual and interactive format. The site uses a side-by-side layout, with supporting historical text on one side and a Leaflet-based interactive map on the other. As users move through the text, the map updates to show relevant locations, years, and cannon placements, helping connect the narrative directly to the geography of the phenomenon. Users can filter cannons by year, explore different regions, click into specific map elements for more detail, and view additional weather-related overlays such as current rain and cloud patterns. Overall, the website turns the project into an exploratory experience, allowing users to understand weather shooting not just as a historical practice, but as something spatial, dynamic, and connected to environmental conditions.
GitHub repository: https://github.com/weathershooting/weathershooting.github.io
A presentation of this research will be shared here and on our YouTube site when available.
How do you feel you have benefitted from completing this internship?
Completing this internship helped me see how much I enjoy working at the intersection of GIS, web development, and research. Building the website gave me more hands-on experience with spatial data, interactive mapping, and front-end development, while also showing me how these tools can be used to communicate complex historical and environmental ideas. It has made me more interested in pursuing future work that combines technical development with GIS-based visualization, especially in projects where maps and digital tools can make research more accessible and engaging.