IF THE present August weather seems unseasonable, perhaps you should be aware that forces undreamt of in most philosophies often have a bearing on these matters.
One of the most famous storms in English literature occurred around this time, in the second week in August in a year unspecified. It was the tempest conjured up by Dracula to facilitate his arrival in the Yorkshire port of Whitby, an event you may have seen portrayed last night on film on UTV.
Bram Stoker and, by extension, many of his characters, were astute observers of the weather. The story opens, for example, with young Jonathan Harker on his way to see the count, and in early May he records a Transylvanian weather observation. "There were dark, rolling clouds overhead, and in the air the heavy oppressive sense of thunder. It seemed as if the mountain range had separated two atmospheres, and that now we had gone into a thunderous one".
As Harker approaches Castle Dracula, "it grew colder and colder still, and fine, powdery snow began to fall, so that soon we and all around us were covered in a white blanket."
But the following August turned out to be a much more wicked month in England. "In the afternoon there was a sudden show of mares' tails high in the sky to the north west. The wind was then blowing from the south in the mild degree which in barometrical language is ranked as `No. 2 light breeze'."
After an impressive account lurid set sting sun, the narrative continues. "The wind fell away entirely during the evening, and shortly before to o'clock the stillness of the air became oppressive. Then, without warning, the tempest broke with a rapidity which seemed incredible.
"The waves rose in growing fury, each overtopping its fellow, until in a very few minutes the lately glassy sea was like a roaring and devouring monster. White crested waves beat madly on the level sands, rushed up the shelving cliffs, and swept with their spume the lighthouses rising from the end of either pier at Whitby harbour.
"Masses of sea fog came drifting inland white, wet clouds which swept by in ghostly fashion, so dank and damp and cold that it needed but little effort of the imagination to think that the spirits of those lost at sea were touching their living brethren with the clammy hands of death."
Soon "a schooner with all sails set" is wrecked upon the beach and a large black dog Count Dracula himself en tapinois jumps out and bounds away to feed his nasty habit on the unsuspecting Yorkshirefolk.