RANDOM NOTES

Dominion, Volume 33, Issue 68, 13 December 1939, Page 8

RANDOM NOTES

Sidelights On Current

Events

(By Kickshaws.)

Well, well, there's been many a slip between the main road and the home.

It is announced that 1941 will be a closed season for ducks. Cricketers, we understand, are hopefully making a note of the year.

Seventeen vehicles, it seems, were involved in an accident, on a main road in America. We understand that despite everything the pedestrian managed to escape.

The West Coast drizzle that has been such a feature of the Wellington climate the last couple of days will at least enable Wellingtonians to appreciate the fantastic lives that folk enjoy in places where it really does rain. Although we cannot claim to have broken any records worth breaking, at least we know now the feel of some six inches of rain in a day. Unfortunately, we have a long way to go before we can really understand what it is like to live in a wet place. The West Coast is alleged to be wet. Anyway, whenever one visits the locality, residents express surprise that it is raining now, because yesterday was gloriously fine. The West Coast, of course, is famed for its fine yesterdays. Nevertheless, the couple of hundred inches of rain on the West Coast is a mere prelude to really wet places. It is believed that well over 300 inches of rain falls on certain parts of Mount Egmont and in the Milford Sound areas of the South Island. Drizzles of a foot a day are by no means uncommon in those areas, but nobody knows exactly what the rain does in many isolated parts where there are neither human beings nor rain gauges.

If some six inches of rain can upset the even tenor of a community to the degree displayed in the Wellington area recently, let us be thankful that we really enjoy comparatively light falls. One of the world’s wettest spots is stated to be Cherrapunji, Assam, where it really does rain. At any rate, Cherrapunjites make the most of the doubtful publicity given the place by the fact that attested weather experts endorse the fact that 36.4 inches of rain has been known to fall in 24 hours. In one fairly wet week this delectable paradise collected a mere 116.5 inches of rain. Even so, the rain record ambitions of the Cherrapunjites was dampby the little spot of wet that fell out of the sky on to Bangino, Philippines. This sunshine paradise recorded ou June 14, 1911, a day’s bag of wetness that amounted to 46 inches. Knowing what it is like when half a foot of rain falls in the Wellington area, one can but vaguely realize the extraordinary things that happen when nearly four feet of rain arrive witbin 24 hours.

When weather experts put their yardstick to our recent wet spell, it is probable that they will find nothing to equal it for the district since February 25, 1911. On that date Wellington enjoyed a shower that filled the rain gauges to a height equivalent, to 6.32 inches in the 24 hours. Let us be content with the fact that we have produced a close competitor for the all-in rain record for this area. Hawke’s Bay, of course, will merely turn a tolerant smile on our little splash. Residents in that locality know what it is like to see a spot of two of moisture trickling from the sky. They have produced many official and unofficial records. Officially, on March 11, 1924, Hawke’s Bay set the New Zealand record for 24 hours’ raiu when, at a township near Napier, 20 inches of rain fell in the 24 hours.' At times during this shower water was pouring out of the sky at the rate of four inches an hour. A farmer’s milk can in the Tararuas constituted itself into an unofficial rain gauge, when after 24 hours standing in the open it registered 23 inches of rain water in the 24 hours during a storm at Eastertime in 1930.

The truth about rainfalls in New Zealand, is that there have been so many instances of six inches in tbe 24 hours, it would take too much space to record them. There are, indeed, many instances of 12 inches of rain in the 24 hours. In the disaster of the Kopuawhara Valley in 1938, it is said that it rained at the rate of four inches an hour for a short period. The damage that was done by this rain which may have totalled eight inches in 24 hours, had to be seen to be believed. Prodigious falls of rain affect different localities in different ways. Spectacular and often disastrous effects occur when a local fall takes place in hilly areas. The streams dash down from the hills, carrying all before them. The amount of erosion that can be done in this waj is stated to be equivalent in one hour to 100,000 men working for a month. In flat districts heavy rain merely produces placid lakes, which wreak destruction in a silent sinister manner Actually, the damage done in the last instance is usually greater, because those areas are generally more thickly populated.

Whether or no one can liken our recent wet spell to a cloudburst, depends largely upon imagination. Strictly speaking, clouds do not burst. The very densest clouds are not more than one" part water to 30,000 parts of air. If a thundercloud were to have all its rain squeezed out of it, the resultant fall of rain would be very much less than the rain left to fall under normal conditions. Some idea of what -a cloud can do when it gets on the job, however, was indicated at Porto Bello, Panama, May 1. 1908. In a space of three minutes 2.47 inches of rain fell. Opid's Camp, in the San Gabriel mountains of California, put up a record when 1.02 inches of rain fell in one minute. This was equivalent to 115 tons of water falling out. of the sky every minute on to every acre. This downpour was caught by two self-recording gauges placed side by side. As their records agreed, it may be taken to be fairly correct. Auckland has enjoyed one inch of rain in 10 minutes, and there have been falls of round about this figure in the Wellington district. Britain’s record is half an inch in live minutes. We hope that, having tried to set up rain records, the Wellington district will now turn its attention to breaking sunshine statistics; a meteoroligical manifestation that is long overdue.

“Your comment ’lt is a fact that the British National Anthem is the best-known tune in the world.’ reminds me that it is also a fact that the bestknown songs in the world are Scottish." says “J.H.D.” "Every hour of tlie 24 in some part or another of the world friends (not necessarily .Scots.) join hands and lustily lift up then voices in ‘Auld Lang Syne,’ which, with ‘Loch Lomond’ and ‘Mary o Argyle,’ till the first three places in the‘World’s Popular Songs’ stakes. Of course, ‘Scots Wha Hae’ is reserved for the country of its birth as nowhere else could vou find a people who are able to live up to the standard demanded by that inspired and inspiring call to arms.” [Maybe readers have other views they would care to put forward.]