WORTHLESSNESS OF WEATHER PROPHECIES.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XVIII, Issue VI, 6 February 1897, Page 169

WORTHLESSNESS OF WEATHER PROPHECIES.

The ‘leading weather prophet* of New York, to give him bis full style and title, having intimated that the coming winter will be the coldest experienced either in the United States or England during the last seventy-five years, and having regard to the fact that for some time past the community at large has been given to understand that there is strong likelihood that the winter of 1896-97 will be of an exceptionally severe nature, a representative of the Daily Telegraph called at the headquarters of meteorology in London, and sought an interview there with a prominent official. Reassuring enough were the first words spoken by Lieutenant Baillie, the gentleman whose opinion was asked at the Meteorological Office, in answer to the initial inquiry addressed to him. *lt is absolutely impossible,’ he said, emphatically, * for anyone in the wide world to foretell what kind of a winter we are going to have.* * You mean to say, of course, that no one can predict with any certainty !’ ’ Quite so ; any statements made of this kind are pnrely the result of guess-work. They must be so of necessity.' * I may take it, then,* continued the interviewer, * that your department has made no observations which in any way bear out this forecast with regard to the winter ?’ —‘Certainly not,’ was the reply. ‘We do not profess, and never have claimed, to make forecasts relating to any period long ahead. Our province does not lie beyond a forecast for the ensuing twenty-four hours, and, even as it is, there are in some conditions of weather such complex distributions of pressure that it is next to impossible to say with any certainty what may happen in the next six hours. ’