CLOCKS AS WEATHER GUIDES

Evening Star, Issue 17685, 11 June 1921, Page 3

CLOCKS AS WEATHER GUIDES

Some observant city dwellers have discovered a new method of predicting the day’s weather before they get up of a morning to look afclhe sky or to see tneir newspaper. It is done by the aid tho neighboring public clocks. Their Town Hall clock, say, is to the north of them, and it has sounded quite near for some days past. During that time tho weather has been very cold and foggy, if in winter, but very sunny and pleasantly cool if in summer. It has been, in short, anticyclonic weather, with a very gentle flow of air from some northerly point. Hence the near sounding of the Town Hall clock. Bub after a while the observer, lying snugly abed, finds that the sound of the Town Hall clock has ceased to come from the north, and that the church clock to the south has taken up tho talc. He knows at once that the weather lias changed, and when he hears the church clock very distinctly there is rain and probably wind about, for tho southerly quarter is the one where the cyclonic weather comes from—and ho prudently lakes his raincoat or umbrella with him to business. Ten to one his expectations of unsettled weather for that day arc fully realised.

Should a clock to the west of him sound unusually loud, ho judges its moaning by the weather of the previous day. If, for example, a wet and windy, southerly or sou’-westerly type of weather bad prevailed on the previous day, then tho clock indication of a westerly wind points to the wind veering and the storm passing away. The day, likely as not, will turn out fine, but much colder than the day before. If, however, tho clock to the west had been distinct for a few days and then becomes faint, and the church clock to the south becomes distinct and apparently close instead, he realises that the wind has backed for the approach of another cyclonic system, or depression, as the newspapers stylo it. Thus are public or other loud-striking clocks made to serve as useful barometers to tho man who is in a hurry to know what the day’s weather is going to be.— ‘ Everyday Science.’