METEOROLOGICAL DATE

Taranaki Daily News, 25 September 1930, Page 7

METEOROLOGICAL DATE

PRACTICAL PURPOSES SERVED. ' < — 9 DISTRIBUTION OF INFORMATION. After detailing the work of the Meteorological Office and explaining the method pf compiling a weather chart, Dr. E. Kidson, iit an address at Wellington, gave some examples of the practical use of meteorological data. ‘•'With the examples of the Lake Coleridge and Waipori schemes fresh in your minds I need not emphasise the importance of a knowledge of possible rainfall fluctuations in connection with hydro-electric schemes,” he said. ' “Nowadays,” he went on to say, “many ‘ large buildings, factories, theatres, telephone exchanges and. other structures have to have air that is properly ( conditioned. By k that I mean air which is at thp proper temperature and of humidity, and sufficiently free from dust. The machinery which has to do this conditioning cannot be economically planned unless it is known what conditions may be met with. It is no use, for instance, having a plant that can warm air from 10 degrees below freezing point to the proper point if the temperature never falls below 35 degrees F. Similarly, there is no need to°provide for cooling from 100 degrees F. in Wellington, where the temperature never gets above 90 'degrees, and so on. “In agriculture, meteorological statistics are put to many uses. A knowledge of'the rainfall is important, because on it the whole productivity of the soil depends. Manuring practice has to be adapted to the rainfall. Frost and hail damage fruit and vegetables, and areas subject to severe frosts and hailstorms should be avoided. Much money has been wasted in New Zealand through insufficient attention to these factors.

“Engineers continually have to make use of meteorological data,” said Dr, Kidson.' “In Wellington just now drainage is a very important problem, and a very complete knowledge of the rainfall is required if the most economical, yet efficient, system is to be designed. The engineer must know not only how much rain falls on an average in a year, and how it varies from year to year, but also how much may fall in 10 minutes, half an hour, or an hour, because it is those amounts that the system must be designed to carry away. Enormous amounts of money would be wasted, for instance, if he allowed for a maximum fall of two inches in an hour, when the greatest fall likely to Occur in an hour was, one inch.”