THE RAINFALL.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume III, Issue 150, 17 March 1876, Page 15

THE RAINFALL.

The extraordinary rainfall of the past year will make 1875 memorable in the annals of meteorology (Nafu re remarks). With scarcely an exception every part of Great Britain has suffered from a plague of rain ; from the Continent and from North America there come the same tidings of incessant rain and vast inundations. Even in a country so far distant as China we hear of unprecedented rains. The following statistics concerning a rainfall that occurred in China between last August 31 and September 1 will be read with astonishment. Our information is derived from the bulletins of the Meteorological Observatory of the Fathers of the Society of Jesus at Silkawei, on whose accuracy of observation we may doubtless depend. The readings show that between four and seven o'clock in the morning of September 1 the mean rainfall per hour was 32*7 millimetres, which makes the astonishing rate of 1*287 inch for each of those three hours. Well may the compiler remark, " We think there are few examples of such a figure, except in the case of waterspouts." The total quantity that fell in the garden of the Jesuit Observatory during the twenty-four hours that elapsed between four o'clock on Tuesday, 31st August, and the same four in the afternoon of Wednesday, Ist September, was 218 millimetres, or no less than 839 inches for the rainfall of a single day ! After this the records of rainfall in Great Britain look insignificant. Nevertheless the fall as far exceeded the ordinary statistics. At Balbriggan, a town a few miles north of Dublin, the rainfall from nine a.m. on the Ist inst. to nine a.m. on the 2nd inst. Avas two inches. This is the greatest fall in twenty-four hours which occurred in that town for the last ten yeais. It is important to obtain statistics from the southern hemisphere. It is probable a vast drought must somewhere compensate for the floods of water poured over a large part of the northern hemisphere.