Chapter IV · (continued 2)

The listless doldrums have sent us 121 of these storms in the last generation. June has seen 8, July 5, August 28, September 40, and October 40.

Sea-yarners have seized upon the hurricane to energize many a flagging chapter, and particularly have they emphasized the eye of the storm. The eye is that vortex where contending winds neutralize each other into a calm, where the sun shines out through the scud, where the waves, relieved of the great pressure, leap upward in wild disorder. Then the center passes and the wind flings itself upon the unlucky bark from the opposite quarter. Its first onslaught is always represented as being the fiercest of the whole storm and gradually lessening as the center drives farther away. This is true in the same way that the first attack of the thunderstorm is usually the fiercest, both being when the pressure begins to rise. This savage change to the northwest is naturally the hardest of all for the ships to bear as they must steady at once against the severest blast instead of gradually bracing for its culmination. In no department of meteorology has fiction adhered so closely to the facts as in the sea-rover accounts of the hurricane.

But in real life there is very little excuse for the vessel to be caught anywhere near the disastrous center of the storm. Indeed, for generations sea-captains have known how to escape the deadly eye. By watching the barometer and noticing in which direction the wind is working round they can tell the course to a nicety and estimate its speed. Then the wise ones run the other way for even the Olympics and Imperators of the sea are cowed by the might of the West Indian.

The typhoons of the West Pacific are similar manifestations.

The hurricane moves off from its birthplace so slowly that our Weather Bureau has an opportunity to size it up, to chart its probable course, and to warn shipping interests. The ship-owners, as a class, appreciate the service of the Bureau and obey its warnings. Vessels with cargoes of a total value of $30,000,000 were known to have been detained in port on the Atlantic coast by the Bureau’s warnings of a single hurricane. Now that a much vaster commerce will steam through these dangerous waters toward the Panama Canal the warnings will assume an even greater importance.

The best description of a hurricane that it has been my fortune to read is in a story entitled “Chita,” one of the remarkable fictions of Lafcadio Hearn. As truthfully as a scientist and with great beauty of style he has pictured the long days of burning sun, the foreboding calm, the thickening haze, the ominous increasing swell of the ocean, a breathless night with the lightning glowing from between piling towers of cloud, the startling suddenness of the wind’s attack, its fury, the hissing rain, the shrill crescendo of the gale.

CLOUDBURST

It is the American tendency to exaggerate. We call every snowstorm a blizzard, every breeze a gale, every shower a cloudburst. In our generous vocabulary it never rains but it pours. Consequently if we, in the East, ever had a real blizzard or a real cloudburst we should be at a considerable loss to find words for an unprofane description. I do not know how they manage out West where these things occur.

A genuine cloudburst must be an amazing spectacle. It is caused by a furious updraft of wind keeping a rainstorm in suspense until so much water has accumulated that it has to let go all at once and the accumulation descends like a wet blanket.

This phenomenon is staged in the mountains; most often in the Rockies where melting snow and desert-hot ravines provide the necessary extremes of temperature. Wind blowing up a mountain-side can maintain considerable force,—so much that a man cannot possibly walk against it. Black thunder clouds brew on the peaks. Suddenly the collapse, and the person who tells the story afterward finds himself struggling in a torrent that a minute before had been a dry gulch. The moral of the story seems to be that if you are camping in the mountains and there is a strong upstream wind blowing and the clouds darken about the hill-tops and the thunder mumbles then don’t make your bed in the creek-bottom lands. The high water marks of former freshets, but not of cloudbursts, show on the side of the stream.

Even in the less impulsive East a couple of inches of rain make a surprising rise in a little creek.

THE HALO

The halo is a luminous circle around the moon or the sun. It is caused by the refraction of light passing through moisture, which at the usual height is in the form of ice-crystals. The halo when complete consists of two large circles whose diameters are constant, 45 and 92 degrees. Then there are often other arches in contact. At each point of contact occurs a parhelion which is a mock sun of brilliant colors and called a sun-dog. Since the sun-dog is brighter than the other parts of the halo it sometimes appears when the rest of the halo cannot be seen. Sun-dogs hunt in pairs or fours. If the halo is colored the red is on the inside. When the colors are caused by diffraction instead of refraction, the red is on the outside of the prismatic ring and the halo is called a corona.

Having now satisfied the demands of science all that can be forgotten except that the halo around either sun or moon means excess moisture in the atmosphere. The wide halos are seen in the high cirrus clouds 25, 36, 48 hours in advance of a cyclone. At first the ring is very wide and faint with several stars in it. If the storm is advancing rapidly the halo brightens and narrows and the stars fade. This is proof to show that the proverb stating that the number of stars inside the ring is a forecast of the number of days of storm is sheer nonsense. For presently the ring closes and the stars disappear which would show according to the proverb that the storm had changed its mind and would cut down the number of days from several to none.

The moon grows paler. The light that it casts upon the earth is eerie at this stage. Within a few hours the cocoon of mist is completely woven about the moon. The circle has closed. Snow or rain begins within a few hours after the moon has entirely disappeared. If it does not so begin it shows that the process of increasing humidity is a very slow one and the storm center is probably passing far to one side of the observer. Also if the snow begins before the light of the moon is entirely suppressed the disturbance is a shallow one and the storm will be light.

When the halo is actually a corona (red outside) the approach of the storm can be gauged by the rapidity with which the circle grows smaller. For a decrease in diameter denotes that the size of the moisture drops is increasing and therefore the storm is approaching. As a matter of fact the corona will have disappeared long before the time for rain. Still it is useful to know that if the corona increases in size the conditions are clearing. With the halo the reverse holds. For when the clouds are very high the halo looks small, and high clouds imply swifter winds and a greater distance from the storm center.

The Zuñi Indians who have an eye for the picturesque as well as for the truth state the chief fact about haloes happily: “When the sun is in his house it will rain soon.” Another saying of theirs anent cumulus clouds holds for our country as well as for theirs: “When the clouds rise in terraces of white, soon will the country of the corn-priests be pierced with the arrows of rain.”

There are many little observations which the man who has kept the corner of his eye open may profit by and yet which are rather difficult to express in type. Who could describe an egg for instance whose springtide of youth was far behind and yet was not quite ready for the discard! In nature it is the fleeting moment of transition, the half-tones of the border that are so hard to catch, so difficult to portray, and yet so very important not to miss if one is to become sure. There follow some of the baldest and most communicable half-facts about the weather that should be used oftener to bolster up some opinion gleaned from more positive sources than to mould one in their own strength.

Moisture in the atmosphere helps sight to a certain extent. For when the air is full of moisture its temperature tends to become equalized, obliterating irregularities which would otherwise reflect the vibrations producing sight and sound. So if one hears better or sees better on a certain day it augurs a moister atmosphere,—an auxiliary sign if there is a view that you are fond of looking at many times a day. In the city, alas, clearer vision on one day than another means merely that less coal is being used. But in camp there is very often a perceptible difference in one’s seeing ability even on days that could all be classed as clear.

Another thing that the haunter of the woods may notice is that his smelling capacity is increased before a storm. The increase of humidity which precedes a rain buoys up odors and depresses smoke. Even in dry weather if you will stroll by a marsh you will notice how rank the vegetation smells and how the smells float in layers in the air strata of different humidity. One’s sense of smell is a very slender thread on which to hang a storm, however.

Fires burn more briskly in dry air than in moist, but to tell the difference (if you can’t feel it) you must be very sure that your wood is as dry on one day as on another.

Before a rain many plants close their flowers or shift their leaves. The dandelion, pimpernel, red clover, silver maple are good examples of this, but they would not be of much use in the North Woods. The closing, too, takes place only a few hours before rain and is merely confirmation of the signals rendered more adequately by clouds and winds.

Bugs and flies are particularly annoying before a storm and it is surprising that the spider should not take advantage of this to get a meal. But spiders are cautious and they never spin a web on the grass, at least on the day that brings a storm. The insects do not fly so high on these weather-breeding days and consequently the birds that feed on them fly lower. The chimney swifts are a particularly good guide to the different altitudes at which insects fly.

The stars are on a par with bugs as weather guides, although there are many proverbs that grant them much. One circumstance should not be neglected, however, and that is that wind mixes air and when air is well mixed atmospheric inequalities are less disturbing to vision. Hence when one can see the stars and the moon well wind currents are oftenest the cause. Even if it is not blowing on earth these wind currents may yet be blowing above to reach the earth later. In this way cold waves arrive. There is an old proverb about this condition, applying it to the moon, “Sharp horns do threaten windy weather.”

But the stars are of second rate importance because they are so soon obscured. If you can’t see them it is cloudy, but you do not know what kind of cloud it is. If only the brightest show, a veil of cirrus is arriving. A dark sky with only a few dim stars is an omen of storms. If the stars twinkle it is because the varying currents of the upper air are in juxtaposition. If they twinkle while the northwest wind is on it is a sign of colder weather,—not because they are twinkling but because of the northwest wind.

In the days when almanacs were the sole guides to the weather a man with a sense of humor, Butler by name, got out one and dedicated it to “Torpid Liver and Inflammatory Rheumatism, the Most Insistent Weather Prophets Known to Suffering Mortals.” Rheumatism is following the almanac to the scrap heap, and it would be harder for a camper to guess what a torpid liver was like than to forecast the weather, yet for the majority of “suffering mortals” there is still much truth in the amiable observation of Mr. Butler,