SEA FREEZES NEAR PAREMATA

Dominion, Volume 32, Issue 256, 27 July 1939, Page 8

SEA FREEZES NEAR PAREMATA

Bewildered Gulls March On Ice SUCCESSION OF LOW TEMPERATURES The sea froze over in Brown’s Bay, Paremata, yesterday morning and hundreds of gulls marched up and down the ice, bewildered and wondering why it was solid where for the lifetimes of most of them there had been water.

A combination of circumstances brought about this freezing of salt water—calm water, shelter from southerly winds, a succession of low temperatures ou preceding days and a proportion of fresh water in the bay. The occurrence is unusual in New Zealand. In the last eight years only four similar occurrences are recorded in the Wellington district—three of these in the winter of 1931. One morning in August, 1931, tne sea froze at Rona Bay, Eastbourne. The same year construction operations on the Tawa Flat tunnel_ resulted in the trapping of an area of salt water. This froze over twice —in July and in August. Last winter ice formed one morning on the water’s edge at Rona *Fresh water will freeze at 32 degrees and salt water at. 28 degrees, depending on how choppy it is. Taking into account New Zealand conditions it is probable that freezing could occur only on glasslike water surfaces. It was stated from the Meteorological Office. Wellington, yesterday, that the air throughout New Zealand was exceptionally cold and likely to stay so for some time yet.