REPORT ON METEOROLOGICAL OBSERVATIONS AT WISLEY. 51 



REPOET ON THE METEOROLOGICAL OBSERVATIONS MADE 

 AT THE SOCIETY'S GARDENS AT WISLEY DURING 1911. 



By R. H. Curtis, F.R.Met.Soc. 



From a meteorological point of view the year 1911 was a very remark- 

 able one, and perhaps to no class of the community was it of more 

 interest than to those whose concern lay in the garden and the field. To 

 the dweller in the town the summer was glorious, but to those whose 

 business it was to keep him supplied with water it was a time of dis- 

 quiet and worry; whilst to the man who saw his pastures burnt up 

 and his roots " shrivelled it was without doubt a year of great 

 anxiety. And yet, taking the year through, the various elements 

 which combined to make up our " weather " gave averages not 

 greatly different from the normal. The individual months were in 

 some instances very remarkable, but the wonderful drought of the 

 summer was balanced by the unusual rainfall of the later months, 

 and the hot days of July and August failed to raise the mean tem- 

 perature of the year by more than one and a half degrees. In contrast 

 with the drought of the summer, when for eight weeks many districts 

 were without rain except for two or three isolated showers, we had the 

 floods of December, when the Thames Valley and large portions of Sussex 

 and of other counties were under water for many days. The summer 

 will, however, be long remembered; for in no previous summer for 

 which we possess reliable records were there so many really hot days, 

 and never before were such high temperatures recorded as were reached 

 early in August, when the thermometer rose to 100° at the Royal 

 Observatory at Greenwich, and to nearly as high a point all over 

 south-eastern England. As regards rainfall, there were only three 

 or four years during the last three-quarters of a century in which a 

 smaller amount fell; and finally the record of bright sunshine was 

 larger than in any year during the three decades in which a record 

 of that element of climate has been kept. 



The outstanding features of the weather of the year will be readily 

 appreciated by a glance at the diagrams. The first shows the difference 

 of the mean temperature and of the rainfall of each month from the 

 average, knd it will be seen that with the single exception of April the 

 mean temperature exceeded the average from January to December, 

 the largest excesses occurring in July and August and in December. 

 On the other hand, the dryness of the year is shown by the fact that 

 the only month which showed an excess until November was June, in 

 tvhich month, owing to local heavy falls, the average was slightly 

 exceeded ; in December the excess more than balanced the deficiencies 

 in May, July, August, and September combined. 



The sudden increase in the mean temperature is shown in figs. 22 and 

 25, as well as the rapid decline after August had passed. Fig. 24 shows 



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