BLIZZARDS 319 



ature with wind. One does not wrap oneself in furs when going 

 for a motor ride because of the cold, but because of the wind. It 

 is the same in polar exploration; the wind is the chief enemy, 

 not the cold. 



Those who, previous to reading this book, have read Amund- 

 sen's ' South Pole ' cannot but have been struck by the fact that 

 while this book is full of descriptions and references to blizzards 

 the word hardly appears in the other. It is very natural to ask 

 the reason for this strange difference. The reason is an impor- 

 tant one, and if it had been known previously the history of the 

 conquest of the South Pole would have been very different. One 

 can now say definitely that the blizzards which have been so fate- 

 ful to British Antarctic exploration are local winds confined to 

 the western half of the Ross Barrier. The meteorological obser- 

 vations made simultaneously at Framheim, Cape Evans, and 

 Cape Adare have thrown a flood of light on to the nature of 

 these winds, and although at the time of writing the observations 

 have not been sufficiently discussed to give us a complete solution 

 of all the problems connected with their origin, many points of 

 general interest have appeared, and an attempt will be made to 

 summarise them here. 



The velocity of the wind can be recorded automatically with- 

 out much difficulty, and this has been done at many observatories, 

 so that we know the chief characteristics of the wind in most 

 countries. In the Antarctic a continuous automatic record of the 

 wind was obtained at Cape Evans; while at Cape Adare and 

 Framheim frequent eye observations were made ; we have there- 

 fore the data for an interesting comparison. 



The character of the wind in the British Isles is found to be 

 very similar at different stations. Calms are very seldom re- 

 corded, and at the other end of the scale winds of a greater ve- 

 locity than 50 miles an hour are rare. There must therefore be 

 some intermediate velocity which occurs most frequently. The 

 records of three years have been taken for Yarmouth on the 

 Norfolk coast, and the number of times winds of different ve- 

 locities occurred counted. 



The result of the count is shown in the second column of 

 Table II., from which it will be seen that at Yarmouth winds 

 having a velocity of 4 miles an hour or less only occur on the 

 average during 5-2 hours out of a hundred. The wind blows 



