BRITAIN’S ABNORMAL SUMMER

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LIII, Issue 16539, 5 January 1928, Page 10

BRITAIN’S ABNORMAL SUMMER

r ROBING NATURE'S REGRETS LON DOM, Nov;. 10. In a sense practically all our summers are abnormal, sinco the so-called normal or standard summer is only an artificial mean. .Popularly, indeed, it is even loss real than that, being a vague ideal of what our summer ought to be rather than a recognition of what •it usually is. it is an amusing consequence of (Ins prepossession that the newspapers are annually rich in descriptions of the “unusual weather,” and the imaginations of many writers lire active in the search for causes. Borne people are quite convinced that the eclipse of the sun is the root of the trouble, forgetting that the wonderful summer of 19H1 followed an eclipse. Others, who appear to regard men of science as wizards or medicine-men, impatiently ask why “they cannot foretell the weather of a few seasons ahead as easily as they can predict the occurrence oi arr ecjipse some centuries hence?” Such grumblers forget that the celestial motions upon which astronomers base their forecasts of an eclipse are comparatively simple aud constant, whereas the atmospheric mpvemently proximately responsible for wcatlnir changes are exceedingly complex. Even the ordinary short-distance forecasts of the meteorologists involve great labor and mental acuteness; and, excellent and useful as these'daily forecasts are in general, they are by no means always fulfilled. Some factor or factors may intervene and upset the nicest calculation. Heroic attempts have been made to discover some general law underlying the varied phenomena of our weather, arid thus obtain a possible key to .the character of the seasons months or even years ahead. There is, for instance, a school of weather prophets that protosses to have found a clue by studying the constantly changing position of the sun and the planets. (.toe of these gentlemen has gone so far as to say that, a few generations honce, it will be •possible to foretell the weather conditions for 500 years in advance 1 Such a, pospeet .is not cheerful, for under present conditions we can at all events live in hope.