THE EQUNOCTIAL GALES.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXXIX, Issue 12076, 20 September 1902, Page 1 (Supplement)

THE EQUNOCTIAL GALES.

[l!V MAHAItA.]

Last week Auckland was swept by strong westerly winds, and the weather-wise nodded their heads and said, " The equinoctial gales are on us." Possibly nine out of ten people who think of the weather at all really believe that in some way or other the precession of the equinoxes, or the equinoctial points, are in some mysterious way answerable for the vagaries of the weather at this season of the year. Certainly this idea is widespread throughout the British —widespread throughout the British world, for here, where the vernal equinox is in September instead of March, we still read and hear of equinoctial gales. As a matter of fact, even in Scotland, where belief in the malign results accruing from the sun passing an imaginary line on the earth's surface is stronger than elsewhere, fifty years of scientific observation show that there are actually fewer storms on the five days of the true equinoxes than on the five days preceding and following these astronomical changes. Long-con-tinued observations in other places support the same idea, and scientific men are equally decisive in their opinion as to the non-effect of the equinoxes as producers of gales as they are that the moon is not made of green cheese, or that it does not hold rain when it is on its back. As a matter of fact, the time of the summer or winter solstice, or when the sun reaches its greatest distance from the equator, should be more provocative of storms than the equinoxes when the sun's ecliptic circle intersects the imaginary equatorial line and, furthermore, the equinox, or point at which the sun does cross the equator is not stationary, but recedes westerly nearly one mile per year, so that the time for gales on any fixed part of the earth's surface would change gradually, and New Zealand would get its equinoctial gales once, in something over a thousand years. Still, after all, what is the use of scientific argument on a subject like this? . We do get gales sometimes when the sun crosses the equator, and we get rain sometimes when the moon is on its back. And I am much more interested in defending the much maligned spring winds of Auckland than in thinking over problems regarding the equinoctial points or the variations of the ecliptic circle. There is no doubt that most town dwellers dislike strong winds, and in this dislike they are supported by many dwellers in the country and a large proportion of those who go down to the sea in ships. The people who dwell in Auckland should be grateful for what they are pleased to call the equinoctial gales. They sweep away many of the impurities caused by defective drainage, and lower the death-rate of the city ably, they are healthy, bracing, and invigor- j ating, and certainly save the City Council much .expense in disposing of its street rubbish. In the country the spring winds may affect the fruit farmers somewhat, but it is questionable whether they do not give him as much benefit as they do harm. Scientists tell us that much of the damage ac- j credited to spring winds is due to fungoid diseases, and that without the winds these fungoid diseases would wreak still more destruction among the tender growing shoots. And, speaking generally, nearly every man, woman, or child whose nervous susceptibility is jarred by blustering winds would be effectively cured of nervous susceptibility altogether by sufficient exposure to the fresh, cool winds we know in this province. The habit of dwelling in houses and working in offices and factories makes us afraid of the elements. Most of us would sooner breathe the vitiated atmosphere of an artificiallyheated roon than face the cool, pure gusts of wind that pour over the Auckland Isthmus at this season of the year, and some actually revile wind as if it were something evil, instead of the great healthy circulation of the atmosphere as necessary to life almost as the circulation of our own blood. Certainly there are winds for which I honestly confess a'hearty dislike. There is the dry. hot, savage dust-storm of Central Queensland which I have endured, to my sorrow. There is the summer nor'-wester of Canterbury, and the cutting wind of the Grey Valley, locally known as "the barber."

Auckland really knows no truly disagreeable winds. The common and long-prevail-ing south-west breeze is genial and kindly, even in its angry moments. The rare southeaster is cold to Auckland blood, but it is neither 'dry nor harsh, whilst the northeaster is balmy, even in its fiercest moods. True, Auckland knows few real gales. Old Captain Cook noticed this more than a hundred years ago : " Strong, fresh westerly winds are common," he wrote in. his diary, "but they rarely rise into a gale." Once or twice perhaps in a year we do get wind up to the gale pitch in Auckland. Now and again we get a taste of the tropical hurricane, but out of the general average of 189 windy days in the year the pressure per inch during at least. 170 is merely normal. There are places where the wind has a peculiar force of its own. On the Tokatea Saddle, for instance. Jn that narrow gap where the road from Coromandel crosses the range to Kennedy's Bay, a thousand feet or more above the sea, the westerly winds are quite different to those erratic gusts we know in Queen-street. There it pours through a rocky cutting, cool, strong, and steady as the current of a mountain river. Sometimes it is so strong that man can scarcely make headway against it, and there are stories of people being detained by it at the Tokatea Hotel for days. Possibly, however, if there were no hotel there they might manage to battle through against it. At Puponga, too, that long, low tongue of land jutting out across the entrance of he Manukau Harbour, one gets the full force of westerly gales. The great, deep gap in the hill ranges, through which the tides pour from sea, to harbour, concentrates the wind to a point of strength unknown even on the peaks of adjoining Titirangi or the highest ridges of the Waitakerei Ranges. In the valley of the Waipa. at the Waikato Heads, at Raglan, and Karioi, one gets local winds, but they are all mild compared with the savage blasts that thunder out of the mountain gorges of Canterbury, or the perpetual gales that shriek against Pusevger Point and the cliffs of Western Southland. Altogether Auckland is favourably treated by the winds, and though they visit us frequently, and blow dust and other rubbish in a very disagreeable manner about the streets, yet we should rather welcome than disparage the strong, cool breezes which come at the vernal equinox, or the warm north-easter which brings us rain in the heat of summer, as well as in the depth of our so-called winter.