WESTERLY GALE.

Auckland Star, Volume XLI, Issue 204, 29 August 1910, Page 5

WESTERLY GALE.

AND A COiB SNAP. STEAMER DRIFTS ASHORE. The explanation of the drop in the temperature on Saturday afternoon, one of the coldest we have had this winter, came along on Saturday night—a freezingly boisterous gale from the west and south-west, accompanied by frequent hail storms and copious rain. This bad weather appears to have been pretty general through the Dominion, reports from Canterbury and Otago telling of snow and h»;h winds. Big seas on the West Coast ot the North Island raged all day yesterday, and the Northern Company s Rara\va was unable to leave for New Plymouth owing to the state of the bar. The same company's Waitangi, which has been laid up in the stream near the Onehunga wharf, dragged her moorings during the height of the storm yesterday afternoon, and now lies stranded on the southern point of the entrance to Geddes' Basin, just below thi Tea Kiosk. The Union Co.'s Navua felt the full force of the gale coming across the Bay of Plenty, and did not make port till after nine o'clock last night. In the South the storm was accompanied by a heavy fall of snow in Canterbury, and it is feared that the loss of stock will be considerable.