OUR WEATHER.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIV, Issue 184, 7 August 1933, Page 5

OUR WEATHER.

MARINERS' RECORDS.

"WINDIEST COAST IN WORLD."

MORE FOG THAN ENGLAND.

For the city dweller the weather is a topic, a dictator of clothing, or perhaps an influence on a day's, employment. The average citizen reads or hears" the daily forecast, knowing little of all that went to its making. The farmer, with less to distract his attention, observes signs and portents, and, in an unscientific way, is more "weather-wise." But even in these days of ocean giants which defy all the terrors of the sea, the mariner is the most skilled of all in the study of Nature's moods. In his unobtrusive way he collects much of the data enabling our professional weather prophets to predict conditions and the times of their coming. The manner in which officers at sea co-operate in this service to humanity is little realised, nor is the great centre of this co-operation known to many outside a scientific or a practical circle..

Day in and day out weather conditions are noted by hundreds of skilled observers on every well-known ocean route throughout the world; the observations are systematically recorded, and the records are dispatched to the meteorological department at the famous Greenwich observatory. It is a process of unfailing regularity and care. Fully 500 specially appointed steamers flying the "red duster" assist in varying degrees in collecting details that enable the vagaries of climates to be studied, and provide much of the information upon which weather forecasting is. built up. Officers aboard most of these vessels rely upon their own instruments, but keep their records in logs specially supplied from the observatory. There is, however, a more select class of steamer which undertakes a task of greater detail. Over 50 of the British mercantile marine, specially equipped with the necessary accurate appliances from Greenwich, Keep a regular four-hourly check upon meteorological ■ conditions in their locality,

Records at Sea. Air and water temperatures, barometer readings, wind velocities and sea density are noted carefully by each officer as he comes on watch. Records are carefully written lip, and duly reach Greenwich, where each one provides a small link in the great chain of air and ocean study. There the meteorological officials collate and tabulate in a manner bewildering to the layman, but from this intricate toil emerge particulars of inestimable value to navigation and to industry. As examples of this co-operation of the merchant service in weather study two cases may.be quoted. The Tainui, regularly on the London-Panama-New Zealand run, keeps one official tab on that route, while the Karamea, which may take the Horn, Good Hope, _ Suez or Panama passages between Britain and New Zealand or Australia, is carrying | out its. four-hourly watch over a much wider area. These are not the only "official observers" trading to New Zealand. for each shipping line has one or more craft in this voluntary work. The I reward comes to the vessel not in money, but in the sense of service to a profession, and in the annual dispatch to the captain of well-bound volumes from the observatory. No fiction prizes these, "but cold data, intricate charts and illuminating graphs for those who sail, and know, the sea.

Surprises for New Zealand. Conclusions that will !be surprising to the layman can be drawn scientifically from this mass of observation. We are rather proud of our New Zealand climate, and compare it with that of England to the disparagement of the latter. But the weather observer off our coasts has a different tale to tell. "New Zealand," he [declares emphatically, "is the windiest place in the world to which important shipping lines trade regularly." Rather a shock to us this, when we read about Channel and Atlantic gales, and Mexican Gulf hurricanes. Records of years, however, bear out the "statement. The risk of a wind of gale force on the New Zealand coast is an all-tlie-year-round risk of about 1 in 12. In the worst months of the year in England—January and February—the gale risk on the coast is 1 in 16, while in summer it is less than 1 in 100. The explanation is a complicated one, but the Australian land mass, the Antarctic and the peculiar formation of our Dominion, lying at an angle to the paths of wind and sea movement, have much to do with it.

Banks Peninsula. To the New Zealander who has. heard of foggy London, it must come as another shock to hear that our own coasts are much more subject to fogs than the English coast. The London fog, as one of these trained mariner-observers pointed out in chatting on the subject, is a local affair, produced iby purely local conditions, and as a rule does not extend to the sea. For years the fog data for New Zealand coast, as given in that guide to seamen, "The Pilot" was most incomplete, and gave the impression that fogs with us were a rarity. Probably as a result in part of this systematic weather observation, later editions, of "The Pilot" disabuse us of this idea, and give much more information to navigators of visij bility conditions in approaching the coast. "Why," exclaimed an overseas | captain, "your Banks Peninsula is one iof the foggiest places I have observed j outside the Newfoundland Banks aroa in years of sailing the globe." Then he went on casually: "And your weather forecasts, too, do not compare in reliability with those of most other countries, I am not blaming the official who makes them; I think he is an exceeding!v capable man, and he does marvels with the paucity of information at his disposal, but I do not envy him his job. Your country is so unique in situation, and the information he receives is so small, that his task is one of greatest difficulty, and men at sea cannot complain when they find him astray. If you had about 20 ships in the Tasman, in regular radio communication, instead of an average of one, I can imagine how much easier the work of your meteorologist would be."