Predicting Weather By The Moon - Xavier University Libraries

Madness and the Moon
6.00pm news. Random events are for the most part whimsically
quaint, as when the phone rings and it turns out to
be the person you were thinking about. Oh, you exclaim, I
must be psychic. But there is also a likelihood that between
your and your friend’s life, some parallel pattern exists unaware
to you both..
The ‘trade’ winds blow steadily between latitudes
10deg and 30deg, from the NE in the Northern Hemisphere
and from the SE in the Southern Hemisphere. Of importance
to merchant sailing ships dependent on wind power,
(hence called ‘winds that blow trade’ by 18 th century navigators)
the trade winds shift in direction in a predictable
way according to the seasonal shift in the high-pressure
belts.
They made the traffic in black slaves possible from
the 16 th to the late 19 th Century. Ships voyaged out from
Plymouth, England, on the northeast trades, from Europe
to Africa’s Guinea Coast with goods to be exchanged for
human cargo. Then, loaded with slaves, the ships rode the
southeast trades across the Atlantic to the West Indies and
thence Charleston, South Carolina, there to barter the slaves
for sugar, rum or cotton. Then they would follow the American
coast northwards and return to Europe on the more
northern prevailing westerlies to complete the trip..
Early sailors also relied on the ‘Roaring Forties.’
These are winds occurring at 40deg S latitude that blew
steadily around The Horn. They were formerly known as
the Brave West Winds.
The Monsoon is time-predictable (end of May and
end of October) and has always played an important part in
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