{
 "schema": "nephos.method.v1",
 "slug": "marin-taos-canyon",
 "title": "John Marin, Taos Canyon",
 "urls": [
  "/studies/marin-taos-canyon"
 ],
 "written": {
  "summary": "A watercolour dated “Marin 29”, from Marin’s first summer in Taos, early June to at least 25 August 1929.",
  "items": [
   {
    "quote": "You can see six or seven thunderstorms going on at the same time. Big sun heat. Big storm. Big everything.",
    "source": "Marin to Stieglitz, from Taos, July 1929, as quoted by the Art Institute of Chicago",
    "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20240819054337/https://archive.artic.edu/marin/artwork/66002"
   },
   {
    "quote": "The temperature of the month averaged slightly above normal, and the precipitation far below.",
    "source": "U.S. Weather Bureau, Climatological Data, New Mexico, June 1929",
    "url": "https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/nerms/api/document/A9979FAB6B7D462E822E190F5C550FC1/download"
   }
  ]
 },
 "records": [
  {
   "name": "Taos Canyon rain gauge",
   "detail": "A Weather Bureau co-operative gauge inside the canyon the title names, 14 km east of Taos Plaza; daily rain, 1909–1943. Its July 1929 days match the printed monthly bulletin.",
   "url": "https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/pub/data/ghcn/daily/all/USC00298673.dly"
  },
  {
   "name": "Taos town",
   "detail": "Daily highest and lowest temperature near the town, and the 1991–2020 normals.",
   "url": "https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/pub/data/ghcn/daily/all/USC00298668.dly"
  }
 ],
 "gaps": [
  "The National Gallery of Art does not offer the image openly; it is not reproduced here.",
  "Marin’s Taos letters are quoted here from a museum label; Letters of John Marin (1931) would give their dates.",
  "No Taos newspaper for 1929 is openly digitized."
 ],
 "tests": [
  {
   "claim": "“six or seven thunderstorms going on at the same time”, Marin, July 1929.",
   "result": "The canyon gauge had no rain in July until the 8th, then rain on 12 days; the state bulletin reports showers and thunderstorms every day somewhere in New Mexico."
  },
  {
   "claim": "“the precipitation far below”, the Weather Bureau on June 1929.",
   "result": "The canyon gauge caught 3.0 mm in June 1929, the driest of its 31 complete Junes."
  },
  {
   "claim": "The day and the weather of the sheet itself.",
   "result": "Dated only to the year; no museum text describes its sky."
  }
 ],
 "finding": "Marin’s first Taos summer began in the driest June the canyon gauge ever recorded and turned, from 8 July, into one of its wettest summers: the thunderstorm season he wrote about.",
 "verdicts": [
  {
   "claim": "“six or seven thunderstorms”",
   "verdict": "Partially agrees",
   "reason": "A stormy July on the gauge and in the state bulletin; one gauge cannot count storms on a horizon."
  },
  {
   "claim": "“the precipitation far below”",
   "verdict": "Partially agrees",
   "reason": "The canyon’s driest June on record; the bulletin speaks for the whole state."
  },
  {
   "claim": "The day painted",
   "verdict": "Unknown",
   "reason": "The sheet is dated only “Marin 29”."
  }
 ],
 "limits": [
  "The viewpoint within the 21 km canyon is unknown.",
  "The canyon gauge measured rain only; temperature comes from the town, 12 km west and 390 m lower.",
  "Daily totals ran from one late-afternoon reading to the next, which splits afternoon storms across dates."
 ]
}