MODERN WEATHER-PROPHETS.
ris said that more people go mad from failure as weather-prophets than from any other form of intel- lectual break-down. As long as the effort was confined to exercise in the hazy and hazardous region of what may be called "applied astrology," the insignificance of the results, whether right or wrong, compared with the imposing forces from which the imagination of the seer tried to make deduc- tions, may have mitigated the pain of error. But science and observation have invaded what for centuries has been a kind of last "reserve," or earthly hunting-ground, for the medicine-man of Europe, and the type of mind which likes to occupy itself with that sort of speculation, swings between the new science and the old conjecture till its brain becomes addled beyond cure. Roughly speaking, the battle of weather. prophecy, as popularly understood, lies between the short- sighted and the long-sighted prophets. The former, we need scarcely say, are the modern men, tied to facts and observation, subsidised by Governments, and quoted daily in the newspapers The last are the popular favourites, whom everybody wishes to be right, and who, when their forecasts are borne out by results, reap the whole harvest of popular applause. The extraordinary drought of the present year, which has this week been broken for the first time by a rainfall which can be appreciated, should settle the question once for all between the regular and irregular practice of weather-prophecy; and if the seers on each side were unanimous, there is little doubt that this would be the case. Unfortunately for those who desire conviction, the position is not so simple as it appears. State-aided meteorology, which puts its faith in daily messages from its outposts on seas and mountains, automatic records, and short views, has no doubt scored a practical success. The break-up of the drought was foreshadowed by the English Meteorological Office on Thursday last as follows :—" The depression over Great Britain is increasing in size, and moving slowly southwards, and rainy weather is likely to set in shortly over the greater part of the Kingdom." On Friday, at 6 pan,, the bulletin for London was "North-westerly winds, fresh, cool, changeable, some showers ; " and for Monday, "Rainy weather is probable over the South of England." That is good so far as it goes. Bat what the human mind desires, next to the probable weather for "this afternoon," is a forecast for a season, as long as possible, and as particular as the author dares to make it. Given that desire, and it is one which will never disappear, any more than the desire for lortune-telling or a perfect system for games of chance will disappear, the stock of prophecies of the kind required will never diminish. Popular faith in irregular weather-prophets will not be shaken so long as their prophecies are conflicting, and the methods, though hinted at, are never disclosed. Mr. Jenkins, who died last year, though his chart continues, based his conjectures on the "Telluric curve," which is vaguely described as : "The disturbance day by day of the sun, moon, and planets on (sic) the earth." How he cal- culated the disturbance, "even from the estimates of the masses and distances of the planets, used by English, French, German, and American astronomers, which are not identical," he did not say. But the "evidence of the great power of the planet Venus in the perturbations which go to form the curve," and which is so subversive that those conditions which are fore- told by the Telluric curve are sometimes actually reversed," is no doubt answerable for a good deal of error. April, 1893, for instance, the driest and hottest known for years, is fore- cast as a "a rather wet month Snow about the 10th and 23rd. Thunder about the 21st." May, which was almost equally dry, and very hot, is to be "a wet and rather cool month," with snow about the 13th, frost about the 15th and 27th. March, the only March for years without cold winds, has "northerly winds, very trying," a" cyclone, with snow, about the 2lith." Mr. Jenkins was a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society. Good old-fashioned seers like -" Old Moore" frankly confess that the weather is a tough subject for prophecy. But he is not afraid to give his opinion, and gives us "cold winds" for May, damaging fruit-trees ; and rain in June which "damps the spirits of our farmers " ! But against these proved failures, we have the prediction of Dr. Falbe of Vienna, who on data equally obscure has succeeded in predicting the drought of spring and early summer, ending about June 20th; and whose further prophecy of a wet July, wetter August, and pluviose September, awaits the test of time. Given that the latter part of his prediction comes true, and that his method is not disclosed for criticism, public faith in the possibility of forecast for long periods will probably endure. Per- haps the most suspicious circumstance in connection with these predictions is in reference to the area to which they apply. Not in Western Europe, with its constantly changing, fluctuating, and uncertain weather, but in the fixed and stable equilibrium of winds and currents in other quarters of the globe, are the elements on which the action of extra-terrestrial forces could beat be estimated; and these are precisely the regions to which the art of the prophets is not applied. Nor must it be forgotten that there still exist persons who boldly claim, not to predict, but to make the weather. The fact that the office of the rain-maker of savage tribes is not extinct in civilised Europe, is said to be attested by weekly offers (for a consideration) to the French Ministry of Agriculture, of forms of prayers for rain to the Virgin and other saints, which have never been known to fail in making a change of weather in twenty-four hours at most.
The methods and system of weather-forecast used by our own Meteorological Office are at least free from the veil of mystery which surrounds the work of more ambitious but less reliable prophets. The system, results, and difficulties of the work are explained fully in Mr. R. Scott's "Weather Charts and Storm Warnings." Briefly stated, it may be ilescribed as relying on a system of outposts along the coasts, backed by a reserve of inland stations, from which the change -of weather or approach of storms is actually observed and reported by telegraph, or the differences in height of the barometer between one post and another is ascertained in time for the proper inferences to be made as to the disturb- ance which necessarily follows. These differences of the barometer—or" gradients," as meteorologists, borrowing from the engineers, have named them—are the best data from which probable weather can be calculated. But signs in the sky, the height and quality of clouds, temperature, and the dryness or moisture of the atmosphere, are all taken into account in conjecturing the nature of the impending change. But Great Britain, with nothing but the broad Atlantic between it and America, suffers under exceptional disadvan- tages of position as regards the means of weather-prediction. It has no outposts to speak of, and the hurrying cyclones— mainly originating out in the ocean, and sometimes crossing direct from the New to the Old World—must often burst on our shores without possible notice of their approach. 'The few stations on the West Coast of Scotland or the 'shores of Galway are of necessity placed in sheltered spots, protected from the furious winter Atlantic gales, but on that account less well suited for perfect observa- tion of the weather. The Atlantic islands are not connected .with the mainland by telegraph ; and though the Faroes would be a capital vedette in the ocean, and St. Kilda still better, no cable could there be made to pay commercially ; and the Azores, which will, it is hoped, soon be in connection with the Continent, lie southward of the usual track of Atlantic -storms. The difficulty of early information under such con- ditions is obvious. In the United States, on the other hand, the course and speed of storms is noted with ease and tele- graphed from point to point across the less populous parts of the Continent, and their arrival can be foretold at a distance of time which, for physical reasons, is here impossible. But these American observations are made at too great a dis- tance to be of ranch service as forecasts for weather on our own coasts. Many of the cyclones never cross the Atlantic, but die out in mid-ocean. Others change their .character on the way, get mixed with other storms, and "cannot be identified ; " and the result of independent 'comparison on both sides of the ocean leads to the conclusion that only about one-quarter of the American storm-warnings are followed by gales of any consequence on the British coasts. On the other hand, what America cannot do for England, England does for the Continent. Our islands, with their system of stations, are the true outpost for the German Meteorological Office ; and as early as 1874, it was found that of 301 warnings of coming storms sent from London to Ham- burg, 72 per cent, were followed by gales, and only in three oases did the storm outrun the message. Wind-prophecy is perhaps the most successful result of our system ; for pro- tracted periods of weather, the method of forecast is yet to seek; and the result of the latest and most careful considera- tion of its possibility states that "no law has as yet been 'discovered for such changes, and that all forecasting of the seasons is the merest guesswork."
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