The Sun.
London, England, 1861-11-08 00:00:00

STORM SIGNALS.

TO THE EDITOR OF THE TIMES.

Sir,—Two letters in the Times of this morning
induce me to offer a few lines as an explanation, if
not a reply, to your correspondents. Evidently
the writer from near Hull had not taken notice
enough of your daily Weather Table, by which it is
shown that Scarborough and Yarmouth (each side
of Hull) report daily, and that there is not a suffi-
cient difference between them to make an inter-
mediate station necessary for reporting to this
office. Hull has barometers and signals, is regu-
larly warned from London, and transmits caution-
ary notices to the Spurn Light and other neigh-
bouring places.
To your Portsmouth correspondent I would
submit the consideration that the experiment of
warning by special and peculiarly shaped signals
has scarcely been tried long enough to justify its
adoption by her Majesty's Government definitely.
At present its effects are being tested by the un-
failing method of experience. The Admiralty has
aided the Board of Trade, which has allowed and
supplied means for this trial; bat the Government
does not incur any responsibility. Were such a
cautionary signal hoisted on board one of her Ma-
jesty's ships, under existing circumstances, it could
not be divested of an authoritative appearance.
Arrangements for an efficient co-operation are in
progress by the Coastguard, depending, of course,
on the results of a few months' trials.

The system is by no means dependent on one
person. There are rules and directions easy to un-
derstand, and now used by my assistants.
On Friday last, at two o'clock, we knew in Lon-
don that a northerly gale was impending on the
northern and eastern coasts of Great Britain.
Having on a previous occasion given warning at
the earliest moment, but unavailing to those who
would not wait even for one day, or more probably
could not then stop (unhappily many of them were
lost on the shores of Durham), and having then
been thought too early, we did not send out the
telegrams until after reading the three o'clock re-
ports from ten salient stations, which arrived at
four, or soon after, from Ireland as well as Scotland.
Getting dark now in the north at five, it would
have been useless to hoist a signal that evening, so
the telegram was to 34 stations on the coasts (in-
cluding those reported daily in your columns) :
"At daylight to morrow hoist drum, and keep it
up all day."
A drum (showing as a black square of three feet)
means that dangerous winds are probable from dif-
ferent directions successively.
On Saturday and Sunday a northerly gale blew;
on Monday and Tuesday a southerly gale was blow-
ing. The instructions accompanying our cautionary
signals say that they apply to any time from first
hoisting to two or three days afterwards.
I do not hesitate to say, and it is more than 40
years since I bought Daniell's first work on meteor-
ology, that the peculiarities of our winds and cli-
mate are now sufficiently known to make it practi-
cable to foresee every extensive storm ; and when
no such change is impending to give the negative
information, often valuable, that no tempest need be
feared.

The storm of last Saturday was remarkably local
and circumscribed, but, as usual, violent proportion.
ally to its smaller extent between two strong con-
trary currents. While blowing hard from the north
with a low thermometer (30 to 40 deg.) across Scot-
land, England, and the western side of the North
Sea, there was a southerly gale over Holland, and
at Paris the thermometer showed 60 deg., while
across France there was only wind from south-east
to south-west.

The weather reports of last Friday morning
showed notable differences of pressure and tempera-
ture—startling when compared with the general
uniformity or gradual changes so prevalent (except
in two weeks) during the last seven months. Places
usually corresponding closely in barometer and tem-
perature numbers differed nearly half an inch and
nearly 20 degrees. (See Nairn, Yarmouth, Dover,
Aberdeen, and Valentia, in The Sun " Weather
Report" of Nov. 1.)
The sure indications of a northerly gale, in addi-
tion to these warning signs, were a low thermo-
meter and a highly electrical state of atmosphere,
with a low barometer, which had been falling for
some days, but fell rapidly on Friday.
At Lynn it was below 29 inches ; at Yarmouth
and at Scarborough scarcely above that point, which
before a northerly wind is equivalent, as a warning,
to 281 inches before a southerly gale.
The storm of Saturday was circuitous or cyclonic;
its centrical area was in the North Sea, off York-
shire, round which along the coast it blew hardest
from Northumberland to Norfolk. OffFlamborough
Head it was sudden and most severe.

There was no wind to speak of in the west of
Ireland. On the north-east coast and in the Irish
Sea there was a short gale. This cyclone was local,
and did not travel far. Faithfally yours,
ROBERT FITZROY.
Meteorological Department, 2, Parliament-

street, S.W., Nov. 7.