From the June 6, 1907 NYT:

As the weather has been taking a prominent place in journalism of late, and as all references to it are invariable concluded with the words "since the establishment of the Weather Bureau," it may be of interest to note what the weather was before that epoch and to observe that there was plenty of it.

The records for New York are fairly complete since 1822, and they show, prior to the advent of the local bureau, that our coldest year was 1837, with an average temperature of 47.6 degrees, and the warmest in 1865, averaging 55.5. This would make a difference of about fourteen weeks in the period of vegetation in the extreme years...

It thus appears that the months with the lowest minima are not necessarily those of the lowest average, and in speaking of the coolest day on any given date, it would be more correct to refer to the average than the minimum...

Thus we see that at the worst, an extremely late Spring is but seven degrees, or about three weeks, later than an average one, and this is usually made up by a warm August and Autumn. The year 1881 will be recalled by many as a good example of this...

There is one fact on which we may place reliance - that "seed time and harvest never shall fail," and they never have, although we cannot reasonably expect a continuous performance of "bumper crops."

Wouldn't it be nice if the print media would offer similar perspective in the current global warming/cooling debate.