Roaring Forties
The English expression Roaring Forties ( dt. Roaring or Thundering Forties) describes the region of the west wind zone between 40 and 50 degrees south latitude .
Winds from the west that often reach gale force blow all year round and cause inconsistent weather , rain and high seas . In the area of Roaring Forties , there is little land mass as the Australia offshore Tasmania , the South Island of New Zealand and the South American Patagonia .
Circumnavigators take advantage of the phenomenon by specifically visiting these latitudes for circumnavigating the world , choosing east as their preferred travel direction. A circumnavigation in the opposite direction is very difficult, but possible, such as Wilfried Erdmann's circumnavigation of the world . In the 19th century, the Roaring Forties had economic importance as part of the so-called Clipper route , which existed in particular as a trade route between Europe and Australia.
Other names for latitudes in the westerly wind zone, occasionally also in the northern hemisphere , are the Howling or Furious Fifties (mostly wild or mad fifties) for the region between the 50th and 60th parallel (implies the difficulty of circumnavigating Cape Horn ) and the Screaming Sixties (German mostly howling sixties) for those between 60th and 70th parallel.