BAD WINTER OUTLOOK.

Taranaki Daily News, 7 May 1919, Page 6

BAD WINTER OUTLOOK.

Mr. F. L. Wooles, the meteorological expert, writes to the Lyttelton Times as follows: The distribution of atmospheric pressure during the past few months has been similar in character to the autumnal conditions prevailing prior to the onset of many of the hard winters of the past. The autumn type this year, in fact, has much the character of the conditions preceding most of the cold, stormy winters of the period between the years 1882 and 1389 inclusive, when flood, rains, and snow were a prevailing feature. Since the eighties there has been no such remarkable sequence of bad winters, though one or two isolated instances, namely 1595, 1903, and last year, were exceptionally severe. It is going ; too far to say that because a certain, type of autumn weather in the past has been followed by a hard winter, this autumn mu<;t necessarily be followed by severe weather, but nevertheless, as far as deduction will allow, the outlook for the coming winter may be as follows: During May and the early part of Juno stormy weather should be a prevailing feature, with the usual fine weather interval. It is, not unlikely that flood rains and a heavy back country snowfall will be experienced some time during that period. Mid-winter should be marked by a rather lengthy spell of fine, frosty weather, and either in July or August a considerable period of wet, stormy weather should again set in. The winter should be a bad one for the backcountry districts, where much snow is likely to be experienced.