THE COUESE OF STORMS. 
147 
Opinions are, I believe, still divided as to the success or non- 
success, on the whole, of these forecasts. There have no doubt 
been some striking verifications (or coincidences), but I believe 
there have been a much larger number of conspicuous failures. 
At the end of January last, I took the trouble to search the 
file of The Times newspaper for that month, with a view to see 
how many storms had been predicted from America, and with 
what success. Now, the month of January, last was a month of 
exceptionally high barometer and settled weather. Excluding a 
few days at the beginning and end of the month, I found that 
from the 4th to the 27th inclusive, the daily charts gave no 
indication of any atmospheric disturbance of any moment in any 
part of Western Europe. Yet during this same interval no 
fewer than nine storms were telegraphed from New York as 
threatening “ the British, Norwegian, and French coasts.” The 
contrast between prediction and fact could hardly be more 
complete. Yet I have no reason to doubt, that the forecasts 
were the best that could be made. Each of them, we may 
assume, was based on the occurrence of an actual storm on the 
American coast, and we know that during a great part of the 
month, the Atlantic was tossed by tempests of unusual violence. 
But the inference that these storms would reach Europe was 
not justified by the event. 
Consulting the chart on the practical feasibility of these 
predictions, we get no conclusive answer, but what answer we 
get is discouraging. 
Of the five depression-centres, which appear on the chart to 
be crossing the Atlantic, one, turning northward, passed near 
Iceland, three became exhausted in the neighbourhood of the 
British Isles ; while the only one, which from the length of its 
European course would seem to admit of prediction, will be 
found to have had its origin in the Atlantic Ocean. 
Professor Loomis, an eminent American meteorologist, has 
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