The universal geography : earth and its inhabitants

CLIMATE. 105Cape ; in summer and winter they blow in the opposite direction, favouringthe traffic between Hammerfest and Christiania. They are otherwise alwaysstronger along the west coast than in the interior, and the storms, frequent inwinter, rare in summer, burst with great fury down the mountain valleys facingthe Atlantic. Near Stavanger, at the entrance of Lyse-fiord, flashes of lightningaccompanied by thunder are occasionally emitted from a bluff 3,000 feet abovethe sea. This happens only when the wind is from the south-east, and meteoro-EofRFig. 53. Isothermal Lixes for the Year.According to Mohn.logists have hitherto been unable to determine the atmospheric conditions underwhich the phenomenon takes place.The warm winds also supply an abundant rainfall, which, however, is veryunequally distributed over the peninsula. In the western islands, and especiallythe Lofoten group, it rains on an average every other day, and at Bergen,on the south-west coast, the fall amounts to 71 inches in the year. Butbeyond the glaciers and snow-fields the average is not more than 39 inches,