TULI-TULIP-TIME?

New Zealand Listener, Volume 13, Issue 315, 6 July 1945, Page 16

TULI-TULIP-TIME?

Another Theory and More Facts

OT long before the shortest day, the winter solstice, midwinter week, or whatever you prefer to call it, someone in The Listener office dared to put forward another theory about the weather, comparable with the Wet Week-end theory that was examined in the light of facts and figures in these pages last March. Only this time it was put in the form of a prophecy. The weather was bitterly cold and wet at the time, and showed no sign of lifting

for days-it was in Wellington’s nearrecord 11-day southerly. Nevertheless, our theorist promised that in the week of the shortest day there would be two fine sunny days, whatever the weather in the rest of the week ‘was like. A tulip expert from Christchurch, it appeared, had told him that qa narcissus friend of the same locality had given him a tip on tulip planting-Plant ’em in the week of the shortest day. They would get a good start, for there were always two fine, even warm, days in that week, and just these two good days to start with would make all the difference later on, we The tulip man had followed the narcissus man’s advice, and found it worked once or twice, though a small black cloud no bigger than a man’s hand had given him one scare. He had passed it

on to our own theory-ridden friend, who was likewise reckless enough to offer it as a workable scheme after a couple of years’ confirmation. In due course we watched the weather during the week June 17-23. And in due course the weather broke. Then was the winter of our discontent made glorious summertwo fine sunny days interrupted an otherwise consistently bleak period of wintry weather, which, as we write, is once more in full swing. Obviously this called for investigation. So we got in touch with the expert in the Meteorological Office in Wellington. The table below shows the years in which (in Christchurch and Wellington) the week of the shortest day contained two consecutive fine days-a fine day being defined as a day with at least five hours of continuous sunshine. A blank represents a year in which the prediction was confounded.

All the years that are mentioned above had at least two fine days running, some (continued on next page)

(continued from previous page) had more. In both Christchurch and Wellington there were only two complete misses in the 17 years-two years in which the week of the shortest day contained no fine days at all. And again, in both cities there were two out of 17 years in which the week contained six fine days. Of the years shown as blanks above, several in each case had single fine days in the week in question. With regard to the last five years in Christchurch note that this year’s figures hadn’t come to hand-also NB that 1944 was a "near miss"-it would have scraped in if one day had had a little more sunthis was probably the fault of the cloud seen in our illustration. At any rate, it looks as if you have every chance of getting- two fine days in 11 years out of 17 if you live in Wellington, or 8 Years out of 16 if you live in Christchurch. If fine, as our theorist likes to say, the odds are with him.

WELLINGTON CHRISTCHURCH 1928 a 1929 — 1930 1930 1931 — 1932 1932 _ 1933 1934 _ 1936 1936 1937 _ 1938 _ 1940 1940 "= 1941 — 1942 1943 1943 1945 ??2??