As this example was calculated about ten days before the actual date, we
have appended an extract from the Milwaukie papers, which is in the same
longitude as Ottawa, in which place the calculation was made. It is
needless to remark that the latitude of Milwaukie corresponds to the
calculated latitude of the centre of the vortex. It is not intended,
however, to convey the idea that the central line is always the most
subject to the greatest violence--a storm may have several centres or
nuclei of disturbance, which are frequently waning and reviving as the
storm progresses. Generally speaking, however, the greatest action is
developed along the line previously passed over by the axis of the
vortex.
"SUMMIT, Waukesha Co., Wis., July 4, 1853.
"Our town, on Saturday, the 2d, was visited by a terrible storm,
which will long be remembered by those who witnessed its effects and
suffered from its fury. It arose in the south-west, and came
scowling in blackness, sufficient to indicate its anger, for the
space of eighty or a hundred rods in _width_, covering our usually
quiet village; and for nearly half an hour's duration, the rain fell
in torrents, the heavens blazed with the lightning's flashes, trees
fell and were uprooted by the fury of the blast, fragments of gates
and of buildings, shingles, roof-boards, rafters, circled through
the air, the playthings of the wind--and buildings themselves were
moved entire from their foundations, and deposited at different
distances from their original positions. A barn, fifty-five feet
square on the ground, owned by Mr. B. R. Hinckley, is moved from its
position some ten feet to the eastward; and a house, some fifteen by
eighteen feet on the ground, owned by the same person, fronting the
east, was driven by the wind to the opposite side of the street, and
now fronts nearly west; and what is most strange, is that the grass,
in the route the house must have passed over, stands straight as
usual, and gives no evidence that the building was pushed along on
the ground. A lady running from a house unroofed by the storm, took
an aerial flight over two fences, and finally caught against a tree,
which arrested her passage for a moment only, when, giving way, she
renewed her journey for a few rods, and was set down unhurt in
Mr. O. Reed's wheat field, where, clinging to the growing grain, she
remained till the gale went by."[11]
The weather at this place is briefly recorded in the accompanying
abstract from the journal, as well as in an extract from a note to
Professor Henry, of the Smithsonian Institution, from a friend of the
authors, who has long occupied a high official station in Illinois. But
such coincidences are of no value in deciding on the merits of such a
theory, it must be tried before the tribunal of the world, and applied
to phenomena in other countries with success, before its merits can be
fully appreciated. The accompanying record, therefore, is only given to
show how these vortices render themselves apparent, and what ought to be
observed, and also to exhibit the order of their recurrence and their
positions at a given time.
_Extract of a note addressed to the Secretary of the Smithsonian
Institution, by Hon. John Dean Caton, on this subject._
"As a striking instance of the remarkable coincidences confirmatory
of these calculations, I will state, that on Friday, the first of
July last, this gentleman[12] stated that on the next day a storm
would pass north of us, being central a little south of Milwaukie,
and that he thought, from the state of the atmosphere, the storm
would be severe, and that its greatest violence would be felt on the
afternoon or night of the next day. At this time the weather was
fine, without any indications of a storm, so far as I could judge.
At noon on the following day he pointed out the indications of a
storm at the north and north-west, consisting of a dark, hazy belt
in that direction, extending up a few degrees above the horizon,
although so indistinct as to have escaped my observation. At five
o'clock a violent storm visited us, which lasted half an hour,
although a clear sky was visible at the south the whole time. On
Monday morning I learned, from the telegraph office at Chicago, that
early on Saturday afternoon communication with Milwaukie had been
interrupted by atmospheric electricity, and that the line had been
broken by a storm."