A DISAGREEABLE SUMMER.

Auckland Star, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 244, 12 October 1907, Page 9

A DISAGREEABLE SUMMER.

It is nearly time to say good-bye to the remnants of the English, summer— the poor apology for summer that the dwellers in these isles have had to put up with this year. It has been a most disappointing season for tourists and travellers, including the many colonial visitors who have come back, after a lifetime spent abroad, to renew acquaintance with scenes of their childhood. The weather has been for the most part sunless, gloomy, and cold, in quite astonishing contrast to the magnificent summer experienced last year. The rainfall has not been exceptionally severe, but it has heen frequent enough to spoil most people's holiday plans, and work havoc with the trade of the se_side resorts. Even the cold comfort of understanding why the summer has been so broken is denied us. The scientists tell us that we have had this summer the weather which normally belongs to the. Faroe Islands. I wish the Faroe Islands would keep its own weather, then, instead of thrusting it on other parts of the globe where it is not asked for and not wanted. Why have we got the Faroe Islands' weather? Because, say the scientists, the two anti-cyclones which usually ward off the bad weather from England's shores have either not existed this year, or have in some unknown way been shifted to the southward. Thus, the cyclones which come from the westward and strike the Faroe Islands have enjoyed an unimpeded passage all over these islands, and have inflicted upon us the weather which normally would have prevailed only at the Faroes. The bad weather, then, is due to the shifting of the anticyclones, and the removal of those stable conditions of the atmosphere with which they are associated—calms and light airs, and a comparative absence of cloud. But what has caused the anti-cyclones to shift is a puzzle which still baffles the scientists. The cause may be atmospheric or it -may be cosmic. No one seems to know. In the matter of weather we are still the blind victims of

circumstance.