The Recent Weather

Abstract

THE weather of the winter months of 1881–82 bids fair to leave its mark on the annals of meteorology in an unmistakable manner. The abnormalities which are distinguishing it may be considered as having begun with the great storm of October 14, which was so disastrous to life and property, particularly among our seafaring population. During the last week of that month temperature fell low enough to produce frost on the ground, a circumstance here referred to from the significance attached to it by Sir Robert Christison, who has been so long one of our best and shrewdest observers of weather. Sir Robert's opinion is that when the temperature in Scotland during either the last week of October or the first week of November falls low enough to freeze the ground, an open winter will most probably follow, an opinion which the prevailing weather since has fully borne out.