Hi if you have just joined this newsletter, which looks behind the weather and way ahead and at the way the moon creates our climate. This revives the ancient mathematical system of longrange weather forecasting, before words like satellite, computer or meteorology were ever dreamed up.
It's a new moon today (8.40pm tonight).
The moon is halfway between the southern declination and the equator, heading north.
A new moon nearly always means rain, especially in summer down here, because the rule is; new moons are destructive in summer and full moons are bad news in winter. The last new moon, last month, nearly wiped out Tiger Woods's golf tournament. Two weeks ago up in the UK they had gales and blizzards on their FULL moon. Rain over a new moon mainly comes at night, and the days just stay cloudy, when rain is about. If rain is not about then it just gets colder at night. Cloud at the moment is down to about 100m in some places.
When it crosses the equator, we generally get a weather change, so that'll be the 16th which is Friday/Saturday. It will clear up then for a few days. Also whenever the moon changes to new, and it is raining, it nearly always clears about 3 days later. That is an old folklore rule also. So, from two points of view you could predict that we're looking at clearing around Friday or Saturday so expect a mainly dry weekend, staying that way till next Thursday. We generally get an earthquake or two around the new moon, and I expect one in South America around today or tomorrow. This February will turn out to be wetter and cooler than average, just like January was. This means there are some heavy falls coming. I think tomorrow, Wednesday will see more falls. And further on, around the 21st we can expect more rain. March in my opinion, is going to see more rain also, but normal temperatures. And after that, April to December, which is autumn right through till next spring, the rainfall around the Auckland region will drop below average.
Easter is coming, and I think there will be widespread light showers not too far away from most areas which will lift after the Tuesday when everyone goes back to work. That happens every Easter, and as Easter is a holiday that is tied to the moon, anyone who watches weather and the moon is not going to be surprised that the weather repeats Easter after Easter. So long as they always make it the weekend of the first Full Moon after the spring equinox they will get roughly the same conditions each time. Perhaps one day they will consider holding the Easter break on the following weekend, when it is more likely to be fine and sunny.
In the 'Cyclones Coming' article on my website we have said that around the 12th/13th would see the tail end of a tropical cyclone coming down which would bring a bit of rain for about 3 days. It is the 13th tomorrow, and we are seeing just that now. This rain is the remnants of Cyclone Chris which formed, as all tropical cycloness do, around the end of the Last Quarter moon. Now it's rebirthed again and they're calling it Cyclone Claudia. Remember Cyclone Chris hit Sydney rather severely a few days ago.
WHAT'S HAPPENED TO OZONE-DEPLETION?
There was a report about the hole in the NZ Herald on October 5th of last year and it said "Reach for your sunhat. This year's ozone hole over Antarctica is nearly the size of last year's record-breaking hole, which covered 30 million sq km of the frozen continent. There have been year-to-year fluctuations, but no obvious decreasing trend over the last 3 or 4 years. We could at this point be near the worst." My question then was, haven't all those restrictions that have been in place worked? And if not, then why should we take any notice of cutting out CFCs? These ozone-hole reports only come out every spring because the hole is always gone by December, which is when everybody is supposed to be in radical danger of getting skin cancer because summer is starting. Generally we get a few reminders throughout summer, to continue research funding for some scientists, to sell skincreams and to continue bullying the kids. But all reports of ozone have gone deathly quiet. Is it because we haven't had a summer of sunshine with several burning hot days on end - instead a fairly wet season? But you would think the good old "hole" was ABOVE the clouds. Is the whole issue just something to sell newspapers?
TEMPERATURE-READING SCAM EXPOSED
The Wellington City Council has been caught out trying to rig warmer temperature readings for the city to promote itself as a warm place. For some years now it has employed an employee whose sole job was to race outside with an umbrella whenever a major deluge threatened, and hold it over the city's official rain gauge. That city has also been accused of positioning the temperature reading instruments closer to the city centre, where it is warmer. It is not alone. The NZ Herald of February 5 claims New Plymouth, Napier and Kaikoura all now have downtown temperature recorders and other councils are considering it. So how scientific is THAT? How on earth can anyone comment on global warming or not when they are virtually cooking the books? Many overseas major cities like Paris and Amsterdam have been accused of the same practice, in order to portray their climates as being warmer than they really are to woo more tourists. Most data-gathering stations are at airports, which are already amongst the warmer places around our metropolitan areas. Just imagine all that asphalt and the burnt and unburnt aircraft fuel hanging in the air. So who can one trust? You can safely bet they won't be putting temperature recorders up mountains, on windy ridges, in the shade or in dark alleys.
EXTREME WEATHER IS NOTHING NEW
The most deadly natural disaster in the USA was the Galveston Hurricane of 8th September 1900. The 9th saw perigee (3rd closest for year) full moon and the moon crossing the equator all coinciding. The hurricane is said to have killed between 10,000 and 12,000 people.
IN THE CRYSTAL BALL
FEBRUARY
These events were predicted in the ezine of February 3. Anyone who wants to check the accuracy of this method of forecasting needs only to check whether or not (to their satisfaction) these events actually occur.
3rd: snow in Geneva, Moscow (it snowed in Moscow on 3rd)
5th: snow in Brussels, Geneva, Seoul
6th: snow in Helsinki, Monte Carlo and Yugoslavia
7th: snow in Stockholm, Warsaw
8th: snow in Calgary, Toronto, Frankfurt and Geneva. Britain thaws out. Gale-force winds in Los Angeles.
11th: snow in Chicago and Vienna
12th: snow in Tokyo and Toronto
13th: Threat of floods NSW, snow in Seoul
14th: snow in Toronto
18th: snow in Helsinki, Kiev, Oslo
19th: flood threat in Sri Lanka, snow in Montreal
20th: flood threat in Mozambique
22nd: snow in Belgrade and Moscow
23rd: blizzards in central Europe, Switzerland, Austria
MARCH
11th: wind-whipped storm across lower midwest of USA, snow in St Louis, and Geneva.
24th: galeforce winds in Britain and N. Europe
25th: storm in Denmark. Snow in Kiev.
27th: galeforce winds ease up in UK for 8 days. Snow in Ireland and Scotland. Also Kiev and Stockholm.)
Dear Ken
I was reading Charles Darwin's The Voyage of the Beagle. He writes: "The connection between earthquakes and the weather has been often disputed: it appears to me to be a point of great interest, which is little understood. Humboldt has remarked that it would be difficult for any person who had long resided in New Andalusa, or in Lower Peru, to deny that there exists some connection between these phenomena: in another part, however, he seems to think the connection fanciful. At Guayaquil, it is said that a heavy shower in the dry season is invariably followed by an earthquake. In northern Chile, from the extreme infrequency of rain, or even of weather foreboding rain, the probability of accidental coincidences becomes very small: yet the inhabitants are here most firmly convinced of some connection between the state of the atmosphere and of the trembling of the ground: I was much struck by this when mentioning to some people at Copiapo that there had been a sharp shock at Coquimbo: they immediately cried out, 'How fortunate! there will be plenty of pasture there this year.' To their minds an earthquake foretold rain, as surely as rain foretold abundant pasture. Certainly it did so happen that on the very day of the earthquake, that shower of rain fell, which I have described as in ten days' time producing a thin sprinkling of grass. At other times, rain has followed earthquakes, at a period of the year when it is a far greater prodigy than the earthquake itself: this happened after the shock of November, 1822, and again in 1829, at Valparaiso: also after that of September, 1833, at Tacna. A person must be somewhat habituated to the climate of these countries, to perceive the extreme improbability of rain falling at such seasons, except as a consequence of some law quite unconnected with the ordinary course of the weather." Wouldn't Charles Darwin have enjoyed a conversation with you about the moon's influence?
Mary L., a Florida reader
(Darwin must have known, being a scientist, that living at the time were British astrologers like Saxby who were putting forward their lunar weather projections and running up against what was to become the establishment. This was in the form of Darwin's father, Sir George, had a bee in his bonnet about gravitation and the Moon. Meteorological science was then in its infancy. In 1879 Sir G. proposed that the Moon was simply a piece of the earth that was wrenched out of the Pacific Ocean. Such was his eminence that the idea held sway. Sir G. wrote a book called "The Tides and Kindred Phenomena in the Solar System" and HE represented the budding science of meteorology. His book became gospel and his opinions went unchallenged. Sir G disregarded that the Moon or any other body could have any vertical component to pull, and that only the horizontal pull existed on tides. He rejected any notion of a 45deg angular pull of the Moon on the Earth, at right angles to gravity and therefore unopposed by it, which was the proper Newtonian interpretation of gravity. Newton, of course, was an astrologer and lunar forecaster. Had older Darwin not been so incorrect, moon science might have progressed. As it was, it stalled in the water, where it remains to this day. Still, the whole subject was clearly of concern to young Charles Darwin - in your excerpt he mentions everything EXCEPT the moon! It is almost as if it was on the tip of his tongue..-K)
http://clysmic.com/lunabar/
This is a desktop program, a little on the mystical side, but with useful information about phase, rise\set\overhead times.
http://users.qldnet.com.au/~carls/ezines/ezineindex.htm
(ezine archives, thanks to Carl Smith, Gold Coast) or
http://www.topica.com/lists/weather/read
SUBMISSION TO CLIMATE CHANGE COMMITTEE, RE KYOTO PROTOCOL
What we sent to the Ministry of the Environment, urging them to consider that the science behind NZ's decision to ratify is mainly just a heap of nonsense. If you would like a copy of what we sent, simply click "reply" then type in the subject box "send submission".
ALMANAC AVAILABLE
Daily weather predictions two days per page including weather maps and moon information for every day of 2002. (For example the new year's bad weather on the West Coast is right there on page 11). Individual towns are listed for every day, plus an inventory for each month, and 5-year ahead monthly rainfall projections for all NZ areas up to and including year 2006. Send a cheque to Ken Ring, P.O.Box 60197 Titirangi, Auckland. 230 pages, A5 paperback size. $NZ27 + 2 postage
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