Roaring Forties

With Roaring Forties ( German: Brewing forties ) refers to the region of the west wind drift between 40 ° and 50 ° south latitude.

These winds blow from the west throughout the year and provide for unstable weather, rain, heavy seas and often run on the storm strength. In the Roaring Forties, there is little land, essentially only the upstream Tasmania Australia, the New Zealand South Island and Patagonia, which extends across the southern part of Chile and Argentina.

Weltumsegler make use of this phenomenon by deliberately seek these latitudes for global travel and select East as a preferred travel direction. A circumnavigation in the opposite direction is very difficult. But even this, there are examples such as the circumnavigation of Wilfried Erdmann. In the 19th century, the Roaring Forties had similarly an economic importance as part of the so-called clipper route, which was used in particular for trade routes between Europe and Australia.

As more names for widths of the west wind zone - sometimes on the northern hemisphere - exist Howling Fifties or Furious Fifties ( in German mostly: furious fifties ) for the region between the 50th and 60th degree of latitude (eg orbits of Cape Horn ) and the Screaming Sixties (mostly howling sixties ) as a term for the region between the 60th and 70th parallels of latitude.