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THE CLIMATE OF MANITOBA

By R. F. STUPART,

Director of the Meteorological Service.

HE Province of Manitoba is almost in the centre of the continent, about midway between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, and also midway between the Gulf of Mexico and the Arctic Sea. It is many hundreds of miles distant from any high mountains, and there are no important water areas to the westward. The topographical features of the province are not pronounced. About two-thirds of the total area, including the basins of Lakes Winnipeg and Manitoba, are at a level of less than one thousand feet, while to the westward the levels increase gradually to about sixteen hundred feet, with some few districts a little higher. Its highest uplands are the Porcupine Mts. between 52° and 53° N. (2,500 ft.), the Duck Mountain between 51 and 52° N., a portion of the Riding Mountain on about 51° (2,000 ft.), and a portion of the Turtle Mt. immediately north of the 49th parallel (2,300 ft.). To the northward and north-eastward of the province the levels fall away towards Hudson's Bay.

Such being, in brief, an outline of the geographical and topographical features of the province, it is not surprising that the climate is typically continental in its character and that such differences as exist between different districts are due chiefly to latitude, and the general meteorology of the zone within which the territory lies.

This zone, within which the other Western provinces are also situated, is one of peculiar interest from a meteorological standpoint, inasmuch as the trajectories of a large percentage of the cyclonic areas moving across