22 SCIENTIFIC SURVEY OF NORWICH AND DISTRICT 
as its capital and beyond, one may feel, through periods of scorching and 
exceptional heat, the filtering stir of cool North Sea airs. 
Just as the dryness of the air keeps the heat of the summer stimulating 
rather than oppressive, so also it keeps the cold of the winter bracing 
rather than raw ; even though winter-time cold in England is keener in 
the east than the west. For contrary to what might be expected, the cold 
of the winter does not descend upon England from the north, but across 
it from the east. It is therefore against the western frontiers of the 
country, beside which the Gulf Stream ferries its constant cargo of warmth 
from the Caribbean, that the assaulting tides of winter form annually and 
break. And since it is by the east they ultimately withdraw, the East 
Anglian area is in January and February the coldest area in England. 
Exactly how the tides of warmth and cold, of moisture and sunshine, 
eddy and ebb and flow through the year may be seen in the brief, tabled 
summary appended of the records of my station. But for those finding 
figures insufficiently informative, may be added a running commentary 
on the weather of the year as it passes the milestones of the months. 
Through January sweeps by the coldest period of the year, with but 
50 hours’ sunshine to its 31 days ; though only infrequently do its cold 
skies bring sprinklings of snow, and but rarely in winter is the ground 
mantled in depth. While the trough of the cold is past by the middle of 
the month, the rise in warmth through February is laggard enough. Its 
rise indeed is but a fraction of a single degreé above January’s, though as 
Fill-Dyke February in East Anglia is the driest month of the year, the 
month’s bare boughs lack locally the beadings of raindrops they commonly 
carry elsewhere. Even in early March the air is still keen, though one is 
conscious now of the growing power of the sun each time the skies are swept 
clear. But by the close of the month winter is thawing from the air ; 
and commonly with the first surge of spring enters proud-pied April, 
less showery in East Anglia than elsewhere, since April’s rains locally 
are almost as slight as the rest of the spring’s. 
It is with May and June the year reaches its period of maximum sun- 
shine. In May, in particular, the clouds so heighten and dissolve as to 
keep the sunshine recorder on overtime, at times up to 14 and 15 hours 
a day ; while as June’s sunshine averages but a few minutes a day less, 
the joint contribution of their prodigal skies to the year reaches 400 to 
500 hours of sun. It is not till after this two months’ flood of sunshine, 
which soaks so far into the ground as to lift soil temperatures a full dozen 
degrees, that the temperature of the year, in July, reaches its maximum. 
The actual crest is reached early in the month; but so sustained and pro- 
longed is the surge of warmth through the whole of the summer, that to 
the close of August the mean temperature has not dropped by as much 
as a single degree. And even while rains in this latter part of the summer 
are somewhat increased, it is not that its rains are more frequent or lasting, 
but that summer’s chance thunder spills heavier showers when they come. 
If spring in East Anglia comes slowly, the warmth of its summer lingers 
late into autumn; indeed, the first month of its autumn might well in 
East Anglia rank as honorary summer. For September’s mean temperature 
falls but 4-9 degrees below August’s, and even October’s mean temperature 
