GRAHAMLAND

Grey River Argus, 13 August 1937, Page 7

GRAHAMLAND

EXPEDITION’S REPORT. [British Official Wireless]. ' RUGBY, August 11. After two and a-half years in the Western Antarctica, members of the British Grahamland Expedition reached Portsmouth in the auxiliary schooner Penola. It was the first British national enterprise to winter in Antarctica for about twenty years. The members explored about a thousand miles of new territory, making reconnaissance flights in their aeroplane, following these by sledge journeys, for which the expedition had taken about ninety Greenland dogs. Grahamland, it was found, was not a collection of islands, as hitherto believed, but a definite part of the Antarctic continent. The Andes, one of the world’s biggest mountain ranges, has its southern extremity in Grahamland. BELGRADE, August 11. Hailstorms stripped orchards, flattened crops, destroyed bridges and water-mills, and killed and maimed sheep over a large area in Slovenia. The damage is estimated at £300,000. A mountain torrent cut a house in half. WELLINGTON, August 12. The calm and pleasant weather being experienced by New Zealand is due to an anti-cyclone of a type common in the Northern Hemisphere, but rare in this part of the world, according to a statement made .by Dr. Kidson, to-day. It is known to meteorologists as a “warm” anti-cyclone. Temperatures at the upper levels are high, unusually so for this time of the year, while in the lower levels there is a large body of cool air, coming from the south. This cool air is being gradually heated by the ground and sea surfaces, hence a good deal of cumulus cloud is present, owing to connection with currents. The belt of cool air has its upper boundary very sharply defined by a sheet of cloud known as stratocumulus. Above is a belt of warm air, the rise in temperature above the cloud being unusually great for any part of the world. A pilot of the Cook Strait Airways who set out from Nelson this morning, found the temperature at 1,000 feet was 40 degrees. It fell to 29 degrees at 4,000 feet, but at 5,000 feet had risen to 49 degrees. While descending at Wellington, a similar series of variations were observed.