THE RECENT PECULIAR WEATHER.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume 6, Issue 1586, 18 January 1884, Page 2

THE RECENT PECULIAR WEATHER.

A correspondent writes to, Brisbane "Courier" •— "Rarely hay thero been known such a succession of equatorial winds as Ik lately swopt over. Australia from Townsville to Hobart, and as. far west as Cooper Creek; and when these prevail day after day, night after night, and week after week, without any polar variation, the mischief done is very great. Not only is the heat intense, with no chance of any thunderstorm, but isolated : bush fires spring up, and spreading east and well as driven southerly, they, g course of time, if the northerly continue, gradually unite in one vast body, of fire, twenty miles or more in frontage, in place of only a few hundred yards, and then a degree of heat is engendered, which, borne before the northerly blast, is enabled to overleap all ordinary barriers, such as rivers and clear spaces, that would stop an ordinary bush fire, and a destruction of property takes place, and a stifling heat is evolved which is never paralleled in any usual state of the weather; and where thermometers cease to mark even the heat, "in tho shade" (so called). A break came in Brisbane .on Christmas Eve, when tho polar wind beat back the equatorial at last, aftor an innings by the latter that lias not been,equalled'in midsummer since 1850-1, when half the colony..of Vic-, toria was swept by fire, and the burnt leaves and smoke clouds, travelled, on 6th February, 1851, aerossßass! Sttajta with the aid of a'real old-fashioned equatorial gale, that had blown for. days, and almost for weeks, beforehand," •