The Weather

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXIII, Issue 39, 28 September 1905, Page 1

The Weather

The weather last week was far from being, as it usually is, a dry subject for conversation. The sustained* tiowJLpoiux turned the landscape grey and slushy for days together over a wide area of the Colony. The chief trouble about the rainfall, even in New Zealand, is tihe same as that about woalth— its unequal distribution. In the North Island it ranges from forty to fifty inches annually ; in the South, from thirty 'to forty. But in 1898 Hokitika was sprayed with as many as 128 inches— which was an intolerable deal of sack. But there ar© greater raingriefs in this world of ours. At Santiago de Cuba some time ago a tropical current poured down at the rate of four inches an hour. And has not Sierra Leone a record of 312 inches in one year ? According to Mulhall, Cherrapungi, in South Western Assam, had an average rainfall of 493 inches for fifteen years, and in 1861 its record soared (or floated) up to 905 inches. It is a oomfort, in the circumstances to know that it is the wettest bit of ' dry 1 land on the face tof the earth. To De Qutncey it would be a sort of Bden, for he loved tain when it rained cats a<nd dogs. To Disraeli's Liberator Hatton it would be a waterlogged Gehenna, for he was a water-hater, and was ' always against washing ' because (said he) 'it takes the marrow out of a man.'