METEOROLOGICAL MIXTURE

Evening Post, Volume CXXXIV, Issue 75, 25 September 1942, Page 3

METEOROLOGICAL MIXTURE

Those who were looking for equinoctial gales yesterday got them, with a fair meteorological mixture, including a thunderstorm, thrown in.

The day started with some very heavy rain, which thoroughly wetted people going to work. Later in the morning conditions improved, but a steadily falling barometer indicated that the clerk of the weather was keeping something up his sleeve. This he unleashed later in the afternoon, when' the wind from the north-west increased in fury, rain fell in torrents, and a. thunderstorm rolled round the western hills. After that the sky cleared, and last night, although it was still windy at. times, the full moon shone serenely from a clear sky.

About 6 p.m. the wind reached its seak, two-gusts with a velocity of 72 miles an hour being recorded about that time. There, were many, other gusts during the day which reached^ a velocity of 60 miles an hour or more, and one of them, about 4 p.m., lifted a tin roof off. the Wellington Concrete #ipe Company's factory in Bell Road, Woburn. The wind did minor damage elsewhere too. The day's rainfall at Kelburn. totalled only 16 points, but considerably more' than that fell in the Hutt Valley, the rain being very heavy for a time in the afternoon.

It is.not often that barometers in Wellington fall below 29 inches, but at 6 p.m. yesterday the reading at Kelburn was 28.94 inches. Since then there has been a substantial rise in pressure. • ' ■

The thunderstorm, which was brief but quite vigorous, caused power fluctuation in the city's electrical supply. The disturbance was general in the southern part of the province, but the chief effect in Wellington was a series of "flash-overs" on the 3000-volt line leading into the Khandallah substation. Though only flickering was apparent in lights, machines in many factories were stopped, for brief intervals. Delay was also, caused to the electric train service between Wellington and Paekakariki.