{
 "schema": "nephos.method.v1",
 "slug": "heade-newburyport-meadows",
 "title": "Martin Johnson Heade, Newburyport Meadows, Met 1985.117",
 "urls": [
  "/studies/heade-newburyport-meadows"
 ],
 "written": {
  "summary": "Nephos reads stacked salt hay, rain shafts at left, sunbeams and a lit marsh as a passing summer shower during salt-haying. This is Nephos’s interpretation of visible features, not a museum statement or a proposed painted day.",
  "items": [
   {
    "quote": "Dark rainclouds give way to sunrays",
    "source": "The Met’s current label",
    "url": "https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/11053"
   },
   {
    "quote": "A beautiful sunset after the fine showers of Sunday.",
    "source": "Newburyport Daily Herald, 26 August 1878, p. 3",
    "url": "https://newburyport.advantage-preservation.com/viewer/GetPdfFile?71834464"
   },
   {
    "quote": "The wet weather and high tides of the past two weeks have prevented the Oldtown farmers from making their salt hay on the marshes.",
    "source": "Newburyport Daily Herald, 2 August 1881, p. 1",
    "url": "https://newburyport.advantage-preservation.com/viewer/GetPdfFile?71878375"
   }
  ]
 },
 "records": [
  {
   "name": "Newburyport rain and original cloud observations",
   "detail": "Castelhun’s daily rain register is complete for July–September 1879 and 1880. The original Form H sheets add daytime upper/lower cloud entries omitted from the CSV.",
   "url": "https://mrcc.purdue.edu/files/FORTS/Data/DAILYBYSTATE/MA_Newburyport.data.csv"
  },
  {
   "name": "The cloud sheet and its key",
   "detail": "The printed form defines zero as entirely clear. Nephos accepts only explicit zeros in both layers at 7 a.m. or 2 p.m.; night, blank and faint entries do not qualify.",
   "url": "https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/nerms/api/document/A2DD99941E64431A90A3CB3382E3BE1C/download"
  },
  {
   "name": "Local haying season and its interruption",
   "detail": "Mass Humanities places cutting and stacking from late June to September; the Herald documents wet weather and high tides stopping Oldtown salt-hay work in late July 1881. The test uses the full months July–September.",
   "url": "https://newburyport.advantage-preservation.com/viewer/GetPdfFile?71878375"
  },
  {
   "name": "Newburyport 1991–2020 normals",
   "detail": "The same three months total 10.90 inches and 28.7 rain days ≥0.01 inch at USC00195285. This modern station remains separate from Castelhun’s.",
   "url": "https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/data/normals-monthly/1991-2020/access/USC00195285.csv"
  },
  {
   "name": "Heade’s working method",
   "detail": "Fulton’s technical study documents development and adjustment of compositions on canvas across other works. It is not a technical examination of this Met painting.",
   "url": "https://cool.culturalheritage.org/jaic/articles/jaic41-02-005.html"
  }
 ],
 "gaps": [
  "No dated sketch, letter or outdoor session has been tied to this canvas in the sources checked.",
  "The painted viewpoint is unlocated, the historical gauge position estimated, and the daily rain observation hour unknown.",
  "The Met’s change from the earlier about 1872–78 proposal to about 1876–81 is unexplained here."
 ],
 "tests": [
  {
   "claim": "Did rain and clear daylight share hay-season dates?",
   "result": "Yes: at least 5 dated records join positive rain with explicit clear daytime sky, among 48 rain dates in 184 days. This conservative minimum excludes partly cloudy and uncertain entries."
  },
  {
   "claim": "Does a contemporary witness describe passing showers?",
   "result": "A beautiful sunset after the fine showers of Sunday. The 26 August 1878 Herald report is outside the two complete rain seasons and is not added to their counts."
  },
  {
   "claim": "Did weather matter to the harvest?",
   "result": "The 2 August 1881 Herald explicitly says wet weather and high tides had prevented Oldtown farmers making salt hay for two weeks."
  },
  {
   "claim": "What can then-versus-now establish?",
   "result": "Historical rain-day counts are 25 and 23; the modern seasonal normal is 28.7. Different sites and two historical seasons do not establish a climate trend."
  },
  {
   "claim": "What did Heade arrange?",
   "result": "The Met describes reduced foreground detail, a broader and lower horizon and less regular haystacks. This supports a compositional reading, not a claim that he altered observed weather."
  }
 ],
 "finding": "At least 5 of 48 rain dates in the local hay seasons of 1879 and 1880 also have a clear daytime sky entry. The Herald records sunset after showers and salt-hay work stopped by wet weather and high tides. These support the weather type in Nephos’s reading; they do not date the painting.",
 "verdicts": [
  {
   "claim": "The seasonal weather type",
   "verdict": "Partially agrees",
   "reason": "Local rain-and-clear dates and a contemporary shower-to-sunset report support its recurrence."
  },
  {
   "claim": "The painted day",
   "verdict": "Unknown",
   "reason": "No record identifies Heade’s observation or the exact marsh viewpoint."
  }
 ],
 "limits": [
  "The clear-sky count is a lower bound from a single-writer transcription, not sunshine hours or measured shower duration. Other rain dates may also have had sunshine.",
  "The local observer’s sky is not the scene itself. Neither wind direction, tide stage nor a precise season date can be assigned to the canvas.",
  "The modern normals have standard S flags and may include NOAA estimates of missing months. No station pool, historical anomaly or climate trend is inferred."
 ]
}