Page:Types of Australian weather.djvu/28

24 features being the bend in the high pressure isobars, and the dormant low pressure off the coast of Queensland.

At 9 a.m. on this day there was nothing in the local weather conditions which would lead one to anticipate the gale that eventuated, the winds being generally light, and at Sydney only a light breeze was blowing from the South-south-west; but at 3 p.m. an unusual fall took place in the barometers to the north-east of New South Wales, and the winds there were freshening generally. On preparing a chart at this hour we found the depression was intensifying and had a cyclonic tendency; at 6 p.m. in Sydney the wind, which had been blowing from the south-east and gradually increasing in velocity, reached the force of a gale, a thick driving rain began to fall, which continued with little intermission until daybreak next day, when over 2" were registered, and an extensive area around the metropolis benefitted to the extent of an inch and upwards; the barometer at this hour also began to fall rapidly and steadily, until at 5 a.m. on the 24th it read 29•203, and the wind had reached in one squall, lasting only a few seconds, the extraordinary rate of one hundred and twenty miles per hour, the mean rate of the gale being thirty-two miles per hour.