14 INTRODUCTION. 



further west Mawson found the highest average wind velocity of any place in the world, 

 the average velocity for a whole year being 50 miles an hour. It is therefore amazing to 

 find that the mean wind velocity at Cape Adare is less than 10 miles an hour, and that 

 for 72 per cent, of the whole time the wind velocity is less than 5 miles an horn-. Thus 

 the frequency of calms is nearly twice as great as at Framheim and nearly four times as 

 great ~as at Cape Evans, and at each of these places the frequency of calms has been 

 considered remarkable. (At Yarmouth in England the frequency of calms — to 4 miles an 

 hour — is only 5 per cent.) 



On the other hand Cape Adare is visited by violent hurricanes : during 10 months 

 14 storms occurred in each of which the wind was recorded as 11 or 12 on the Beaufort Scale. 

 These high winds, as a rule, lasted cnly a few hours ; but ^^hile they blew the members 

 of the Cape Adare Party were in deadly fear that their hut and all their belongings would 

 be blown into the sea. Although the wind direction in the hurricanes is from the south-east 

 or south they are in no way connected with the blizzards of Cape Evans. 



Thus the outstanding features of the weather at Cape Adare are the remarkable fre- 

 quency of calms and the abnormally high winds. 



