For my earlier and more detailed reflections, see The Salisbury Review 13, 1994, 21-3, accessible from the magazine’s digital archive.
Strange weather phenomena are, of course, one of Fort’s major preoccupations, with hundreds of examples from 1800 to his own time. A sign of our own time is the efflorescence of website articles attributing the fall of ancient civilisations to the dual effect of pandemics and climate change, a somewhat discouraging trend.
One of these two claims is demonstrably wrong. For ancient pandemics, see my column in . There is a detectable pattern. The plagues appear from nowhere, ravage, go away, recur (often with redoubled virulence), then vanish. Athens did not fall from its epidemic, nor did
