The Arctic regions and the northern whale-fisheryScoresby, William
History
The Arctic regions and the northern whale-fishery
Scoresby, William
Arctic regions; Whaling -- Arctic regions
The following are the relations which, in Polar latitudes, I have
been enabled to trace between the barometer and the weather:—
1. A hard westerly gale, with snow, occasions the greatest depression
of the mercury; and a light easterly wind, with dry weather, the
greatest elevation.
2. The rising of the mercury foretells the subsidence of wind or
rain, a change of wind or fine weather; and its falling, rain, snow,
or a change or increase of wind.
3. The mercury rising unusually high, and then becoming stationary,
indicates, in the months of April and May, a continuance of fine
weather; but in June or July, foggy weather.
4. If, in the month of April, the mercury fall with some rapidity an
inch or more, a storm will most certainly succeed, however contrary
appearances may be, which will probably be the more severe in
proportion as it approximates the east, and will frequently continue,
with unabated violence, for fifty or sixty hours.
5. The rising of the mercury usually precedes the cessation of
a storm, but does not invariably determine the period of its
continuance, as storms frequently blow for a day or two after the
first rise of the mercury.
6. Sudden and repeated fluctuations are indicative of unsettled
weather; but the rapid fall of the mercury is no indication of a
short gale, though, in other regions, the reverse is said to be
the case; for, before storms that continue two or three days, the
barometer frequently falls an inch within twenty-four hours; and
indeed, in a gale as long and as heavy as I almost ever witnessed,
the fall of the mercury was above an inch in twelve hours.
7. Before very heavy storms, when the barometer falls uncommonly low,
the mercury seems to get below its natural level, and often rises two
or three tenths of an inch as soon as the predicted storm commences;
hence this first rise of the mercury is no indication whatever of an
abatement of the wind.
8. On account of the different states of the barometer in west and
east winds, the usual level of the mercury, with a moderate wind at
west, not being much higher than with a gale at east, a change of
wind from one of these quarters to the opposite may be accompanied
with the greatest alteration in the strength of the wind, without
producing any effect on the barometer.
The appearance of the Greenland atmosphere corresponds in some degree
with the winter sky of Britain; the colour of the former is, however,
of a deeper azure, and its transparency, when clear and free from icy
crystals, perhaps more perfect.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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