Seeing the inclement weather this past Saturday in Washington, DC got me thinking about the weather of past presidential inaugurations.

Back in 1841, our ninth president, William Henry Harrison, gave the longest inaugural speech on record - 1 hour and 45 minutes - on a cold rainy day without a hat or coat. He got a cold that eventually turned into pneumonia, and died a month after taking office, the shortest term of any president.

The snowiest inauguration was probably in 1909 when ten inches fell in Washington on the day William Taft became our 27th president. The wettest was in 1937 when FDR was sworn in for his second term, with almost two inches of rain and temperatures only in the 30s that day. The coldest Inauguration Day on record was not all that long ago, in 1985 when Ronald Reagan was sworn in for his second term. The high that day in Washington was only 17^oF, and wind chills were well below zero.