ATLANTIC STORMS.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXX, Issue 4408, 6 May 1875, Page 3

ATLANTIC STORMS.

(From tho New York Herald, March 8.)

A highly interesting communication on Atlantic storms has recently been published in the London scientific journal, Nature, from the pen of the French savant, M. de Fonvielle. His suggestive views are prompted by a brief editorial comment in our columns of January 23, relative to the terrible westerly gales through which the transatlantic steamships, then arriving, had to force their stormy westward way. The Herald article, to which M. de Fonvielle refers, drew from the long record of steamer detentions and ship disasters the lesson that "the severest cyclones may be looked for as the sequel phenomena of the great winter areas of high barometer and intense cold ; or, in other words, the rising glass should be studied by the seaman as carefully as the falling glass.". Citing these words of the Herald, in which the French scientist concurs, he is led by them to make the very valuable suggestion of connecting the barometer conditions in the United States with those simultaneously prevailing in "Western Europe. He communicates to the Nature the •significant information that the high barometers or Polar waves at that time in the United States wei-e associated and linked with very -low pressures-on, the other side of the Atlantic. On the 15th of January a strong south-westerly gale was raging at Valentia, which indicated the presence of a storm centre west of Ireland, which must have greatly intensified the effect of the North American Polar waves on the westward-bound transatlantic steamers. There can be little if any doubt that such a barometric depression as M. de Fonvielle mentions would produce a powerful indraught of air from the American coasts, and greatly increase the force of our westerly coast winds in front of a Polar wave. " Evidently," he remarks, " the danger is very great when a risiug barometer in America is coupled with a falling barometer in Europe, and rice versa-." The remark unquestionably holds good, but the application, as he suggests, can be practically utilised for storm-warning purposes only when telegraphic information can be promptly passed from side to side of the ocean for the guidance of the meteorologist and navigator. There is every reason to believe that the weather conditions on either side of the Atlantic are intimately related and so inter-dependent that when they can be reciprocally telegraphed from Europe to America the furious tempests of mid-ocean may be approximately predicted. When this is accomplished it will show the utility of the system of international synchronous weather reports now undertaken by the different maritime Powers, as agreed upon at the Vienna Conference. It is to be hoped that the French scientist's suggestion may be availed of as soon as circumstances permit. The Atlantic steamship might then leave port forewarned as to the character of the weather she would be likely to encounter on each voyage.