’79 not a good year for weather

Press, 25 January 1979, Page 23

’79 not a good year for weather

NZPA Moscow It’s all in the magic number 79, according to Soviet weather experts. The annual almanac of the Soviet Weather Service, published in Leningrad. carries a study of chronicles and documents for the last millenium that shows the years ending in 79 as landmarks of baa weather. One thousand years ago. in 979, horrible thunder and strong winds occurred throughout Russia, according to the almanac, called “Man and the Elemen's.” The scholars who collected the weather data say conditions reached the opposite extreme 100 vears ago, in 1879. when the winter was unusually warm and humid and there were catastrophic floods and the level of the

Caspian Sea reached an all-time high. The almanac's historical research, described by the Tass News Agency, set out to answer the question whether the weather of 1979 is under the control of caprices or general laws. Its findings, it said. c?i hardly be described a heartening. The year so far has started off with historic cold spells and snowstorms across the Soviet Union. Europe and the United States. New Year's Day in Moscow was the coldest in recorded history, temperatures dropping to -2.5 degrees Celsius.

Immediately, they rose to above freezing, and the icy ground turned to slush in unseasonal early-morn-ing rainstorms. Now

everything is frozen again, and even harsher cold is predicted. Something of this sort se£ms to nave happened exactly 300 years ago. according to Russian, German and Scandinavian chronicles, when monumental snowfalls so high a horseman could not pass delayed a Tartar invasion ot the West in 1079.

Temperatures rose suQdenly that year as well, bringing a summer so intolerably hot in central Europe that even oak trees burst and withered, the almanac said. One hundred years later, in 1779, an exceptionally severe winter stretched ’ from the Seine in France to the Volga Hi Russia; birds dropped from cold in flight and glaciers moved actively in the Caucas and the Alps.

In 1579, there had Keen another cold winter, followed by severe floods everywhere, according to the almanac. Westminster Abbey was inundated by the Thames in London, and tn Russia it rained throughout the summer. The year 1279 was an other landmark, with a drought that swept East

ern Europe, the Soviet weathermen said. In conclusion, they wrote that they have no intention of making grim predictions about the rest of 1979 They described their findings about the weather as only caprices . . . that reflect the objec five unevenness of global temperatures throughout the centuries.