IN ANTARCTICA

Hokitika Guardian, 29 April 1929, Page 5

IN ANTARCTICA

(By Bussell Owen—Copyrighted 11*2!) by the New York Times Company, and St. Louis Post Dispatch. All rights for publication reserved throughout the world. Wire'ess to New Yoik SYDNEY, April 28. | Times.)

WELL BELOW FREEZING

FOG AND ITS CAUSES

'United Press Association—By Electric Telegraph—Copyright).

(Received this dav at R a.m.) BAY OF WHALES, April 24. Another storm period seems upon us. The wind is again blowing hard and etmperature still twenty-one below, Tost night it was 'forty below and the day before fifty-eight. The wind started yesterday afternoo" and slowly but steadily increased in force until the drift outside hides everything in a smother, which and confuses anyone who ventures out in it.

Bvrd has been trying all sorts of arrangements to find something to protect us against the wind, and yesterday he went for a long walk down the bay ice with the temperature fifty-four below and a twenty-mile wind blowing. If the wind can he kept from the face, which is the only exposed part of the body, he has found he can keep warm for a long period of time. He has been experimenting with a face mask to protect the nose and cheeks, and has devised one which, although it gets wet and frozen, doesn’t touch the skin and acts as a shield. The onlv places which the wind can hit are around the eyes and he is trying to find a way to . protect them. Furs have proved perfect clothing, except for fast travelling, when they are too warm.

W’-ile he was on the bay ice yesterrlav there was a perceptible fog, despite the low temperature. Tt seems inconceivable that moisture could exist in the air in such cold weather, but the fog is real. This is explaine 1 by the fact that humidity may be relatively just as great here as in a warmer climate although the actual amount of moisture contained in the air will hold only a certain amount of water at a certain temperature. For instance it will hold about two hundred times es much as water at fifty above as fifty below, but fifty below has a certain saturation point, so when wind comes up as it did yesterday, and stirs up the warmer and colder air, a change in temperature causes condensation of a small amount of moisture and makes an unnatural appearing, but very real fog.