Charlotte, Emily and Anne Bronte all used detailed descriptions of the weather around their moorland home at Haworth to emphasise the dramatic and emotive aspects of their novels.

Last October, Rebecca Chesney set up a solar powered, digital weather station at the Bronte Parsonage Museum in Haworth to collect weather-related data such as rainfall, wind speed, air pressure and temperature.

While doing that, she also started a residency at the Parsonage, reading letters and novels by the Brontes and researching historical weather records to try and cross-reference similarities and differences with the present day weather readings.

To complement the scientific data being collected, there are also local volunteers noting down weather comments everyday for the duration of the year.

The sum of the scientific data and personal reflections is intended for an archive of weather information specific to the Haworth and Thornton area.

Using the weather station records and her time at the Parsonage, Chesney has developed a series of drawings on graph paper that parallel specific quotes from Bronte writings, on display at Thornton’s South Square Gallery this summer.

With the use of handwritten historical weather records from the 1800s, Chesney has also developed a series of screen prints relating weather patterns to key dates during the Bronte sister’s lives and deaths.

Each image is an over-layered mass of data, unreadable in its intensity and suggestive of the severe and devastating impact that weather had on the Bronte’s health.

From drizzle and mist to storms and gales, thunder and lightning to sunshine and rain, the Bronte sisters’ novels reference the same changing weather conditions that continue today.

* Hope’s Whisper is on from July 11 to 29. Thornton’s South Square Gallery is open noon to 3pm, Tuesday to Sunday.