MR. A. W. PRESTON’S METEOROLOGICAL NOTES. 549 
flood, was exceptionally wet. As the table shows, the total 
rainfall of the three Summer months was nearly four times as 
great as in the three similar months of 1911. The Autumn was 
considerably colder than usual, due chiefly to the cold of Sep- 
tember, but the rainfall was slightly below the average amount. 
The Year. 
The year 1912 exhibited some singular contrasts. An 
exceedingly mild winter was interrupted at the beginning of 
February by a week of Arctic cold, while an abnormally cold 
and wet Summer had one week of tropical heat sandwiched 
into the middle of July. The great beauty of 1912 was its 
Spring, but the brilliant skies of April and the lovely Spring 
weather of that and the following month were subsequently 
quite overshadowed by the dreary Summer and disastrous floods 
which followed, and from which this part of the country will 
take long to recover. Taking the year as a whole, however, 
bad as a great deal of the weather was, it was not so uniformly 
ungenial from beginning to end as some previous years, e.g., 
1860 and 1879. In tne latter year winter continued with great 
severity until May, and there was no Spring at all ; whereas in 
1912 the Winter was, on the whole, an exceedingly mild one, 
and the Spring one of the most beautiful on record. The mean 
temperature of the year was about a degree above the average. 
Sunshine, from the returns with which Mr. Willis has again 
been good enough to furnish me, was 210 hours below the 
average. The total rainfall at Norwich, 35'03 ins., was a 
record back to 1860, the previous heaviest year’s rainfall there 
having been 34'97 ins. in 1882. The maximum fall for the 
County of Norfolk, reported to the Norfolk Rainfall Organisa- 
tion, was that of Cawston, where the Rev. T. H. Marsh 
registered 38'72 ins. This excess was largely due to a local 
thunderstorm in May. I am informed, however, that at Bylaugh 
Park, near East Dereham, 40‘74 ins. were gauged. According to 
“ Symons’s British Rainfall,” the largest reported year’s rainfall 
for Norfolk between 1860 and 1912 was at Dunham in 1872, and 
amounted to 44'46 ins. In the same year slightly over 40 ins. 
were also measured at Hardingham, Pickenham, and Swaffham. 
VOL. IX. 
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