146 BAILIWICK RAIXFALL. 



period of greatest phase (0*11 p.m.) and the shade tempera- 

 ture dropped several degrees, though exactly how much of 

 the latter effect was due to the passage of some detached 

 clouds is not quite certain. Rather less than half of the 

 sun's disc was obscured here. 



August was the hottest month of the year. Its mean 

 temperature as worked out from the Les Blanches observations 

 viz. 61*3 deg., shows it to have been the warmest month since 

 September 1911, which had a mean of 62*1 deg. It was a 

 wet month also, but only as regards total precipitation. 

 Really, if we exclude the thunderstorm rain on the 14th and 

 a fairly heavy showery interval which occurred everywhere 

 on the following day, very little rain fell from the 7th to 

 the 24th. 



In our weather notes, under the date of September 4th, 

 occurs the following : 



"To-night a thunderstorm is passing northwards west of the 



island. Lightning has been seen since 8 and thunder heard since 9.30 



o'clock. Both are still (11 o'clock) occurring, but the storm is distant 



and no rain has so far fallen at Les Blanches." 



And in the next day's notes this additional information 



appears : 



" The storm last night died away soon after midnight, no rain 

 having fallen here (Les Blanches), but quite a downpour was 

 experienced at St. Peter's-in-the-"Wood. Very heavy rain fell in town 

 towards 5 a.m., 0'26 in. at the Guille-Alles Library and 0.29 in. in Mr. 

 Saumarez Le Cocq's garden at Clifton. At this station, where 

 lightning was seen, 0*01 in. only fell — a mere sprinkling." 



Alderney would seem to have come pretty much under 

 the influence of this disturbance, for Mr. Picot reported 

 " heavy thunderstorm in the west during night." And the 

 returns showed a rainfall of over half-an-inch (0*56 in.) to 

 have come down in association with it. 



But the worst electrical storm of the season, at any rate 

 as far as Guernsey was concerned, occurred on Tuesday, 

 September 8th. Let us quote from the weather diary at Les 

 Blanches : 



"Last evening's distant thunder and lightning developed into a 

 sudden and extremely severe, but fortunately short-lived, thunderstorm 

 which burst over the island at 30 a.m. to-day [the 8th] accompanied 

 by a gale of wind and much rain. By 1 o'clock the storm was 

 practically over — dying down in the W.N.W. 



The disturbance approached the island from the southward with 

 great rapidity — its rate of progression for a thunderstorm was quite 

 unusual — and for a few minutes about 0*45 o'clock was alarming in its 

 severity. At this hour the lightning was intensely vivid and incessant 

 and with the violent thunderbursts showed the storm to be in the 

 immediate neighbourhood. 



Rain fell in torrents for a little while and to add to the wildness of 

 the moment a gale, as sudden in its advent as the storm itself, played 



