SOUTHERLY BURSTERS. 23 



EFFECT OF COASTAL FORMATION. 



As they advance, the anticyclones gradually become separated 

 by a wider space and isobars of the depression open out and 

 become round instead of pointed, grow more obtuse in fact, and 

 were it not for the mountains of the east coast intensifying these 

 conditions the wind should reach us as westerly instead of 

 southerly. 



BURSTERS IN SOUTHERN COLONIES. 



While the barometric conditions just referred to are travelling 

 over West and South Australia they produce weather somewhat 

 similar to that experienced here under similar conditions, and 

 hence it is said that the burster is felt in South Australia and 

 Victoria as well as on the eastern coast, but although this is true 

 in a sense, the local conditions on the east coast intensify the 

 characteristics of the " burster " to such a degree that it is very 

 unlike the burster of the southern Colonies, and is in fact quite 

 different. 



GEOGRAPHICAL CONDITIONS IN SOUTHERN COLONIES. 



In South and Western Australia particularly, the atmospheric 

 waves pass over comparatively level country, and the fact that 

 two high pressures are sometimes so close together may be ascribed 

 to accident. But in New South Wales the geographical aspect is 

 widely different. This province is traversed along the east coast 

 by a mountain range, whose pinnacles have a mean altitude 

 of from three to four thousand feet, and this checks the forward 

 motion of the anticyclone until the moment of the mass of high 

 pressure carries it over, but while the power to do this is accumul- 

 ating there is formed in the hollow or vast basin, west of the 



BURSTERS INTENSIFIED ON THE PLAINS. 



highlands, what may be termed a local depression, the sun heating 

 the plains and causing an up draught from the soil, which makes 

 the ,\ assume an intensified character. And it is retained in this 

 situation until the high pressure at its back gathers sufficient 

 force to send it also over the mountains, which it ultimately does 



