Storm Warnings

Abstract

TWENTY-EIGHT years ago, M. Le Verrier wrote to the Astronomer-Royal at Greenwich inviting the co-operation of this country in his scheme for giving warning of storms by announcing them and following their course by telegraph as soon as they appear at any point of Europe, and in the following year (1861) Admiral Fitz Roy established his system, giving notice of storms before they actually strike our coast. Notwithstanding the success which has attended these efforts, storms sometimes overtake us before warning of their approach can be given, and every endeavour to increase our foreknowledge of their movements should be gladly welcomed. Since the year 1860 much additional light has been thrown upon the subject by the systematic publication of synchronous charts, such as those commenced by the late Captain Hoffmeyer, Director of the Danish Meteorological Institute. Several attempts have also been made to utilize the Atlantic cables with the object of giving warning of storms leaving the American coast or met with by the fast steamers bound to the United States; but these efforts have hitherto met with little success from want of sufficient knowledge of the conditions existing over the Atlantic, many storms passing wide of the British Isles, others originating in mid-ocean or dying out there. Of the endeavours to connect our knowledge of the weather over the Atlantic with the reports received from the two shores, the labours of Captain Hoffmeyer as explained in “Études sur les Tempetês de l'Atlantique septentrional” (Copenhagen, 1880), and recent publications of M. Léon Teisserenc de Bortin the Annales of the Central Meteorological Office of France, deserve especial attention. With the view of utilizing the American weather reports for the purpose of improving European weather predictions, M. de Bort has made an investigation of the mean positions of high and low pressures in the northern hemisphere for all winters since 1838, and he shows how these great centres of atmospheric action correspond to different types of weather, that during each season these centres are limited in number, and that each of them when displaced still lies within a definite area.