Abstract
LONDON Meteorological Society, November 16.—Mr. G. J. Symons, F.R.S., president, in the chair.—Twenty-seven gentlemen were elected Fellows of the Society.—The evening was devoted to an account of the gale which passed across the British Isles, October 13–14, 1881, which had been prepared by Mr. G. J. Symons, F.R.S., with the assistance and co-operation of Mr. C. Harding and other gentlemen. There is evidence of the storm being formed in the Atlantic, about 150 miles south of Nova Scotia on October 10, and that at noon on the 13th there was a considerable disturbance about 600 miles west of Galway. At that time there were scarcely any instrumental indications in the British Isles of the coming storm; the barometer was falling at Valentia, but not rapidly, and at some of the western English stations it was rising. The curves of barometric fluctuation show very plainly the advance of the depression from west to east, for while at Valentia the minimum occurred at 2 a.m. on the 14th, on the east coast of Norfolk it is recorded that it did not occur till 4 p.m. This fact, coupled with others, seems to indicate an easterly progression of the barometric minimum at nearly forty miles per hour. As far as the sea is concerned, the chief force of the gale was felt on the afternoon of the 14th in the German Ocean, and there the great loss of life and destruction to shipping seems mainly due to the exceptionally violent squalls which were peculiar to this gale, as well as to the extremely sudden manner in which the wind increased to hurricane force. The afternoon became quite darkened by the salt water blown into the air, so that it was impossible to see a ship's length ahead. The barometric chart for 9 a.m. on the 14th showed that the pressure in the north of England was an inch lower than in the south, and nearly two inches lower than in the South of France. The area over which injury was produced was very large, and although not without precedent, it was happily rare. The record of 56 lbs. per square foot at the Royal Observatory, Greenwich, was the highest ever registered in that locality, and close by thirty-five trees were blown down in the park, and fifteen feet blown off the top of a spire which had been erected about forty years, the stone of which shows no sign of decay, and which had retained its position almost, if not wholly, by the gravitation of its mass. The general opinion seems to be that the structural damage over the greater part of the country was by no means unprecedented, and in the greater part of Ireland and the southwest of England was not even of an unusual character; but along the east coast and in the East Midlands the damage was excessive, and on the north-east coat unprecedented. In Scotland the destruction of trees was enormous.—Mr. J. Wallace Peggs, F.M.S., also read a paper on the structural damage caused by the gale as indicative of wind force, and remarked that since the Tay Bridge disaster attention had once more been directed to the subject of wind pressure. He suggested that a cpnference of delegates from societies specially interested in the subject should be held, who should make experiments and carefully consider the whole question.
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Societies and Academies . Nature 25, 119–120 (1881). https://doi.org/10.1038/025119b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/025119b0