Appendix E.
REPORT OF THE DIRECTOR OF THE OBSERVATORY.
The comparison of weather-forecasts issued daily with the weather subsequently experienced has been conducted on the same system as heretofore (compare Annual Report for 1896 § 5). The results are as follows:-
Success 58 per cent., partial success 34 per cent., failure 1 per cent., partial failure 7 per cent. Following the method used in Meteorological Offices and taking the sum of total and partial success as a measure of success, and the sum of total and partial failure as a measure of failure, 92 per cent. of the weather-forecasts were successful in 1910.
The average results for the three preceding years were as follows:-
Success 58 per cent., partial success 32 per cent., failure 1 per cent., partial failure 9 per cent.
2. The greater part of the typhoons directly affecting this area in 1910, crossed the China Sea to the South of the 20th parallel, and no violent gales were experienced in the Colony during the year. A gale in which the squalls reached a velocity at the rate of 60 miles per hour (as recorded by the pressure tube Anemograph), resulted from the typhoon which entered the coast to the West of Macao on June 30th.
3. About 70 copies of the China Coast Meteorological Register were distributed in the City daily, and hand-made copies of the daily weather map were exhibited on the notice boards as in the previous year,
4. By the courtesy of the Directors of the Philippine Weather Bureau and the Formosa Weather Service, the ordinary daily service of meteorological telegrams was supplemented by extra messages from stations in the Philippines and Formosa during the prevalence of typhoons in the neighbourhood of those areas. Many of these telegrams proved particularly useful, but occasionally messages could not be forwarded owing to telegraphic communication in the islands being interrupted by bad weather.
5. The Imperial Maritime Customs Authorities at Swatow kindly forwarded daily by telegraph an extra meteorological observation, made at 9 p.m., from May till October. These messages were, however, frequently subject to delay in transmission.