Abstract
THE general rainfall of 1933 was below the normal for the first time in eleven years, the percentage of the average of the 35 years 1881-1915 being only 80 for the British Isles as a whole, 82 for England, 80 for Scotland, 76 for Wales and 77 for Ireland. Only an area in north-eastern England and a very small area in Hampshire had more rain than the normal in consequence of one or two heavy storms. During the first quarter of the year, rainfall was more or less up to normal, there being a considerable excess in February, but October, and September in England, were the only other wet months. June was remarkable for the exceptional number of violent thunderstorms, though the month was scarcely more impressive in this respect than June 1914. There were also heavy storms here and there in tfee later summer months, but the event of the year was undoubtedly the great snowstorm of February 23-26 in Ireland, Wales and part of England. This is commemorated in the frontispiece showing a road heavily blocked with snow in Co. Carlow. An observer at Crickhowell in Breconshire, who was overtaken by the blizzard whilst on the mountains with some local farmers looking for sheep, states that they considered themselves lucky to have escaped with their lives, especially as they repeatedly had to take shelter in the rocks to avoid choking, so thick was the drift and so fierce the gale.
Air Ministry: Meteorological Office. British Rainfall, 1933: Seventy-third Annual Volume of the British Rainfall Organization. Report on the Distribution of Rain in Space and Time over the British Isles during the Year 1933, as recorded by over 5000 Observers in Great Britain and Ireland.
(M.O. 375.) Pp. xvii + 293 + 4 plates. (London: H.M. Stationery Office, 1934.) 15s. net.
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B., L. Air Ministry: Meteorological Office British Rainfall, 1933: Seventy-third Annual Volume of the British Rainfall Organization Report on the Distribution of Rain in Space and Time over the British Isles during the Year 1933, as recorded by over 5000 Observers in Great Britain and Ireland. Nature 135, 638 (1935). https://doi.org/10.1038/135638a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/135638a0