THE BIRTH, LIFE, AND DEATH OF A STORM. 
251 
predicted storm, is really the very disturbance which left the 
American coasts. 
The experience of those who have studied cyclone tracks in 
Northern Europe shows that in winter, on an average, a cyclonic 
disturbance visits some parts of those regions every fourth day, 
so that if a warning were announced once a week regularly, 
there would be nearly a certainty of some sort of a fulfilment. 
The results of a most careful comparison of these warnings 
with the weather experienced by us during the years 1877-78, 
are given by the following percentage figures : — 
In order to obtain so favourable a result as 45 per cent, of 
general success, great allowances have been made. Thus it has 
been considered an absolute success if a gale was felt on any 
part of the coast, whereas the prediction was for all parts ; and 
when three separate storms were predicted in one telegram, 
none of which arrived, only one failure has been counted. 
It is, therefore, pretty clear that these warnings have not, as 
yet, proved themselves to be of much practical utility to our 
coasting trade and our fishermen. The question is a most 
interesting one, and although a satisfactory solution of it has 
not been attained, we need not despair ; but we should attack 
it from the scientific side, and discuss the results in a calm, 
dispassionate spirit, and through some other medium than that 
of letters to newspapers. 
Let us now leave these American warnings, and see what we 
know about the movement of storms over Western Europe, 
which is the problem which most immediately concerns us here. 
The illustration has often been used that meteorologists, in 
issuing storm-warnings, and having to estimate the direction 
and rate of motion of every storm the instant it shows itself in 
their neighbourhood, are in the position of astronomers ex- 
pected to assign the path of a comet from the first glimpse 
they get of it through a break in a cloud — a problem which all 
will allow to be impossible of solution. Accordingly, great 
interest attaches to the attempts made from time to time to 
lay down principles for forecasting the motion of the disturbance. 
I have already stated that, as a general rule, the cyclones 
move round the anticyclones ; but this principle requires for its 
application to storm-warning purposes, access to charts em- 
bracing a very considerable extent of the earth’s surface. These 
are very difficult for Englishmen to obtain, as our own daily 
charts are very limited in area, and frequently do not exhibit 
even the whole extent of a single cyclonic depression, much less 
its relation to the distribution of pressure all about it. For 
1877 
1878 
Absolute success 
Partial success . 
Partial failure . 
Absolute failure 
45-0 
55*0 
