1886.] illustrating the value of Cape Point as a Warning Station. 213 



London, the whole Colony to Kimberley and Bloemfontein being 

 affected by it. Fresh north-west and Avest winds blew all over the 

 Colony. 



The rainfall in Cape Town was moderately heavy, being '36 of an inch 

 in my gauge on the morning of the 24th. On the whole of the 23ril, 

 in fact, the weather was very stormy and squall}^, especially during 

 the evening when some very heavy squalls were experienced. On the 

 morning of the 22nd the Cape Point barometer read '02 of an inch 

 higher than it should, which indicated another depression and sure 

 enough during the day a small secondary passed. 



One peculiarity of the wind at the Royal Observatory as self- 

 recorded is that from 7 a.m. till midnight on the 23rd the wind 

 although generally calm as registered by the mileage trace, yet passed 

 in a series of squalls which kept on continually altering the direction 

 of the vane from north-west to west, back to north-west then to 

 south-west and south-east, back through west to north-west and 

 repeating itself over and over again many times each hour. 



It is in cases like these that the anemometer trace fails to indicate 

 the intensity of individual gusts. One gust at half-past-eleven is 

 visible on the trace as a very slight horizontal line. The speed at 

 which the cups must have revolved for this short time must have been 

 inconceivable. 



There are a few more of these faint horizontal marks, but the one 

 I have mentioned is the most conspicuous. 



1 could go on multiplying cases if I liked, where storm after storm 

 passed, but there would be such a sameness about each one that it 

 would become very monotonous, as the general sequences are the same, 

 the only variation being due to the directions they come from, and tlie 

 tracks of the centres. If they come from the north-west they are 

 preceded by south-east winds which suddenly go round to the 

 north-west as the centres pass ; but if they come from the south- 

 west, they are preceded by north-west winds, which chop round to 

 the west as the centres pass. 



These latter are the ones which bring the most rain to this end of 

 the Colony. The reason of this is that the left-hand half of the 

 cyclone is the wet half, so that if a storm comes from the north-west 

 and passes us to the north-east, we are the whole time in the 'dry 

 half of the cyclone. 



At the beginning of this paper I mentioned that the Table Cloth on 

 Table Mountain was due to the presence of the lower stratum of the = 



