RAIN, HAIL AND SNOW.
“I bring fresh showers for the thirsty flowers,
From the seas and the streams,
I bear light shade for the leaves when laid
In their noonday dreams.
From my wings are shaken the dews that waken
The sweet birds every one,
When rocked to rest on their mother’s breast,
As she dances about the sun.
I wield the flail of the lashing hail,
And whiten the green plains under.
And then again I dissolve in rain,
And laugh as I pass in thunder.
I am the daughter of earth and water,
And the nursling of the sky,
I pass through the pores of the ocean and shores,
I change, but I can not die.
For after the rain, when with never a stain
The pavilion of heaven is bare,
And the winds and sunbeams with their convex gleams,
Build up the blue dome of air,
I silently laugh at my own cenotaph,
And out of the caverns of rain,
Like a child from the womb, like a ghost from the tomb,
I arise and unbuild it again.”
The cloud is well worth Shelley’s admiration; for though it be but a
vague oppressive mist when it enwraps, yet afar it assumes either beauty
or gloom, as its seeming whims may dictate. Few are they who have never
paused in silent admiration of some beautiful fleecy spirit of the upper
deep, changing every instant like the shifting figures of a
kaleidoscope, or presenting fantastic likenesses of natural objects, or
ever and anon presenting pictures of strange monsters, such as only the
superstitious and timid can imagine. Often in times past have nations
stood aghast at the portentous signs observed in season of some great
calamity. A lurid beam of light from the hidden sun, darting through a
rift in the clouds, has been reported as a flaming sword. Shortly before
the destruction of Jerusalem, the sky was filled with horses and
chariots, rushing to battle. After the siege the wretched survivors
recognized too late what was the purpose of the warning.
Wordsworth speaks of these bizarre fantasies:
“Lo! in the burning west the craggy nape
Of a proud Ararat! and thereupon,
The Ark, her melancholy voyage done.
Yon rampant cloud mimics a lion’s shape,
There combats a huge crocodile--agape,
A golden spear to swallow! and that brown
And mossy grove, so near yon blazing town,
Stirs and recedes--destruction to escape,
Yet all is harmless--as the Elysian shades
Where spirits dwell in undisturbed repose,
Silently disappear and quickly fades,
Meek Nature’s evening comment on the shows
That for oblivion take their daily birth
From all the fuming vanities of Earth.”
And naught can present so sombre and terrifying an aspect as those
phantoms of the air, when mailed with the lightning and flying with the
storm.
Yet, upon the cloud the welfare of the human race is dependent, as much
as upon any other force in nature: for rain or drouth, famine or plenty,
snow or flood, all follow in its path. More than once has rain or storm
decided the destiny of nations. Far different might our own lot have
been, if that bitter storm of Christmas night, 1777, had not given
Washington an opportunity of surprising the carousing Hessians in
Trenton, and so reviving the drooping spirits of his countrymen. Hardly
would he have escaped, but that the sudden frost hardened the ground and
enabled him to steal away by night with his artillery, leaving the
chafing Cornwallis the privilege of attacking the deserted camp on the
Assanpink in the morning. It was a winter storm that enabled the bold
Vermonters to surprise the frowning fortress on the upper Hudson.
Napoleon could invade Russia, and drive the Cossack pell-mell before
him; no mortal power could control the elements; and his splendid hosts
melted away like snow in the breath of the icy storm; and once more the
Cossack sang to his steed:
“Now fiercely neigh, my gallant gray; thy breast is broad and ample.
Thy hoofs shall prance o’er the fields of France and the pride of her
heroes trample.”
Again the “Man of Destiny” was conquered by the elements.
“There was a sound of revelry by night”
as the dread combat of Waterloo prepared. The plan of the “Genius of
War” was superb. But all his contests were problems of artillery. “The
Lord is on the side of the strongest battalions and heaviest
artillery"--bold manner of saying that “when one seeks for the reason of
the successes of great generals, one is surprised to find that they did
everything necessary to insure them.” But he who would insure success
must have the clouds at his beck. That night it rained. The mud crippled
his artillery and left the contest to the rifle and bayonet. Waterloo
was lost. A shower of rain changed the face of Europe--the history of
the world.
Scriptural narrative and the sage Josephus tell us how the Philistine
host were cut down by the motley rabble of almost unarmed Israelites,
routed mainly by a terrific thunder storm that beat in their faces,
flamed upon their weapons, and transformed the disciplined army into a
panic-stricken multitude. What might have been the future of Israel and
the Jewish faith, but for the intervention of that storm? We need not
multiply instances.
[Illustration: FIELD OF WATERLOO.]
The causes that produce the different phenomena of condensation in rain,
hail and snow, are not known. Rainfall is the most indefinite of all the
atmospheric phenomena in location, quantity, frequency, and
distribution. The winds do not vary greatly, one year with another; but
such is not the case with the rain. Sometimes the condensation is slow
and the moisture falls on the earth as mist. Some suppose that the
rainfall is due merely to the cold of great elevations: and this would
seem to be well supported by the prevalence of fogs on the Newfoundland
banks, where the constant cold current and the occasional icebergs
produce a similar degree of cold at sea level, condensing the moisture
from the warm seas southward. Others urge that two masses of saturated
air of different temperature combine, necessarily condensing the
surplus; and the Newfoundland banks are again referred to as an
illustration.
Light on fog-banks often presents peculiar and beautiful illusions. The
writer remembers having seen a whole town apparently wrapped in flames,
the effect being produced by the lights from many windows shining
through a light mist that was curling and twisting before a light
breeze. Similar causes produce the peculiar halos and mock-suns and
mock-moons not infrequently seen in the sky. These, and the beautiful
rainbow, all depend upon the reflection and refraction of light in
passing through vapor masses. These curious spectacles once had no
little terror for the ignorant and superstitious. Shakespeare doubtless
alludes to some such case in the dialogue between Hubert and King John,
making Hubert narrate an exaggerated version of the facts, as the
superstitiously inclined rabble reported it:
_Hubert._--“My lord, they say five moons were seen to-night;
Four fixed; and the fifth did whirl about
The other four with wondrous motion.”
_King John._--“Five moons?”
_Hubert._--“Old men and beldams in the streets
Do prophecy upon it dangerously;
Young Arthur’s death is common in their mouths.”
Sometimes an appearance more terrifying to the uninitiated is seen. The
traveler in Germany may hear strange myths of specters that frequent the
mountains. It was long said that spirits dwelt on the summit of the
Matterhorn. Gigantic phantoms roamed the Harz Mountains. One of the best
known of all these apparitions is the famous “Specter of the Brocken.”
The wanderer on the lonely height at sunrise may see upon a neighboring
summit a gigantic shadowy figure, moving about, and mimicking every
motion of the traveler. Of course, it is but his shadow on a neighboring
fog-bank; but the solution remained a mystery long enough to terrify
many a simple peasant into needless invocations of the saints. But
similar appearances are occasionally observable in many localities. The
Spaniard Ulloa records that on the mountain Pambamarca, in Peru, he saw
his shadow on the cloud surrounded by three complete circular rainbows.
The same peculiarity has been frequently noticed elsewhere, but never on
so grand a scale. We find no peculiar myths concerning halos in general,
it being generally considered that they announce the approach of rain;
and the fog-bank is of no especial danger save to the seaman, or the
traveler overtaken and blinded by one in mountain fastnesses; though
their depressing influence has led one writer to exclaim:
“Fly, fly, profane fogs! fly hence far away,
Taint not the pure springs of the springing day
With your dull influence; it is for you
To sit and scowl upon night’s heavy brow.”
And the fog, though not ornamental--unless we except that dry haze, the
Indian summer--may be useful in preventing a frost, or in keeping a
parched earth from drying too rapidly. But for this last, all the world
prefers the rain, and sings with Longfellow:
[Illustration: SPECTER OF THE BROCKEN.]
“How beautiful is the rain!
After the dust and heat,
In the broad and fiery street,
In the narrow lane,
How beautiful is the rain!
How it clatters along the roofs
Like the tramp of hoofs!
How it gushes and struggles out,
From the throat of the overflowing spout,
Across the window pane it pours and pours,
And swift and wide,
With a muddy tide,
Like a river, down the gutter roars
The rain, the welcome rain.”
Not always welcome; for we find the same poet moaning:
“The day is cold, and dark, and dreary,
It rains, and the rain is never weary.”
And certainly, the farmer who looks through the driving rain at his
ruined crops has little sentiment left to expend upon its beauty. But
the world over, after a rain every feature of a landscape stands out
with singular clearness; the haze commonly prevalent has for the nonce
disappeared.
The amount of rainfall varies so vastly in different countries, that it
would be tedious to the reader to enter upon a detail of the different
amounts. In general it is greatest upon those portions of the land first
reached by regular incoming sea winds. So in South America, Peru and
southern Ecuador are practically without rain, as the Andes and the
Amazon forests deprive the trade winds of their moisture ere they reach
the Pacific coast; while southern Chili seldom sees the sun; lying in
the track of the return trades, whose moisture is at once precipitated
by the Andes. So in India the monsoon which pours deluges of water along
the southwestern coasts, brings but twenty-three inches a year to the
central plateau; and by the time Central Asia is reached, it is so dry
the steppes of Tartary must remain almost a desert. And in our own
land, we find in general the heaviest rain from the eastern coast to the
central region: while the western plateau along the eastern slopes of
the Rockies is unusually dry, and liable to protracted drouths: and in
the Mojave desert, and in southeastern California, the rainfall is less
than two inches per year. On the North Pacific coast the rainfall
increases rapidly, as in the southern Andes; but in general our highest
mean rainfall is in the southern portion of the Gulf States. The highest
average in the world is so far credited to Sumatra, one hundred and
thirty inches. This, of course, refers to tracts of considerable size;
for a small tract in Assam, on a mountain slope, where is the town of
Cherrapungee, has a rainfall of four hundred and ninety-three and
two-tenth inches per annum--more than forty-one feet! Twenty-two feet of
rain have fallen there in a single month! A better idea of this may be
obtained by observing that our average rainfall, from Missouri eastward,
is about three feet a year. The rains of the Amazon and Congo basins are
enormous, and would suffice to swell our Mississippi to as great volume
as either of them. On the other hand, the lowest recorded rainfall for a
large tract is that of Greenland--fifteen and five-tenth inches; while
Australia, with fifteen and seven-tenth inches, is but little better
off. It may be mentioned here, that the term “mean rainfall” includes
snow also: ten inches of snow being ordinarily estimated as one inch of
rain.
A point long mooted, now considered as definitely settled, was, the
influence of forests upon rainfall. There was no doubt that forests
retarded the descent of water into the streams, and so lessened the
danger of floods; and observations of late years have shown that the
forest also increases the amount of rainfall, aiding in the work of
condensation. In the northern lumber regions, the rainfall in the
cleared tracts is less than in the time of the forests, while floods are
more sudden and dangerous.
These general features being noticed, mention of a few extraordinary
rainfalls may be of interest. The most remarkable rain in one day
occurred September 13, 1879, at Purneah, in Bengal, when thirty-five
inches fell; about as much as Illinois gets in a year. At Nagina,
thirty-two and four-tenth inches fell. Some extraordinary showers have
been recorded in our own country, the most rapid being one and one-half
inches in five minutes: the most rapid long one, ten inches in three
hours; but no record of a day in anywise approaches the Bengal rain.
A peculiar phenomenon of occasional occurrence in the Western States is
that of “cloud-bursts,” or “water-spouts” as they are sometimes called,
when immense masses of water fall in a few minutes. As the entire amount
of moisture that can be held by the atmosphere at ordinary temperature
would make but two inches of rain, it must follow that to produce such
downpours as are here recorded, immense quantities of moisture from a
wide area must be drawn in and condensed rapidly at a single point.
Perhaps this is done by a reverse cyclonic movement, the atmosphere
rapidly descending in a “spout,” instead of ascending.
August 11, 1876, a tremendous downpour occurred at Fort Sully, Dakota:
“and on the opposite side of the Missouri River, the water draining from
a canon was reported to have moved out in a solid bank three feet deep
and two hundred feet wide.” Two others of nearly equal violence occurred
during the same month: one in Utah, and one in Kansas. “June 12, 1879,
on Beaver Creek, ninety miles south of Deadwood, Dakota, there was a
cloud-burst, which, without a gradual rise of water, in a few minutes
covered the country and drowned eleven persons.” A cloud-burst in June,
1884, sent a torrent eight feet deep from the hillside into Jefferson,
Montana, drowning several persons. Another one in June, 1885, destroyed
a town in Mexico, drowning over one hundred and seventy of its eight
hundred inhabitants. Cloud-bursts near Pittsburg, on the night of July
25, 1874, destroyed $500,000 worth of property, and drowned or crushed
in the wrecks, one hundred and thirty-four persons. A cloud-burst in
Arizona, August 6, 1881, changed the Hassayampa River from a dry ravine
at sunset to a river a mile wide and from two to fifteen feet deep by 11
P.M.; by noon next day the river was again dry. Two days later a
downpour at Central City, Colorado, suddenly left from four to six feet
of water in the two principal streets.
Snow is practically unknown over two-thirds of the land surface of the
earth, and the damage done by it is confined largely to the inland
regions of the temperate zone. And even then heavy snowfalls do no great
injury unless followed by extremely cold wind. The blizzard laden with
“icy sand” is fearful.
“The night sets in on a world of snow,
And the air grows sharp and chill,
And the warning roar of a fearful blow
Is heard on the distant hill.
And the Norther! See! On the mountain peak,
In his breath, how the old trees writhe and shriek!
He shouts on the plains, Ho-ho! Ho-ho!
He drives from his nostrils the blinding snow,
And growls with a savage will.”
The extreme ranges of temperature produced suddenly by high area or
anti-cyclonic storms are the most dangerous features of the blizzard;
while the only damage done by snow is to blind the person caught away
from home, and cause him to lose his way. The past ten years have been
marked by severe storms in our own winter season, the most terrible
being that of January 11, 1888, when the wind blew from thirty to fifty
miles an hour, and large numbers of persons in the west were frozen, and
thousands of cattle perished. At Helena, Montana, the thermometer fell
fifty degrees in four and one-half hours. The snow-laden wind reached a
speed of forty miles an hour at Galveston, Texas. At Brownsville, Texas,
the temperature fell forty degrees in eight hours. Two months later came
an exceedingly heavy snow attended by high winds, in the eastern Middle
States. This is popularly known as the “New York blizzard.” Snow drifted
in many places ten or fifteen feet deep.
“The fence was lost, and the wall of stone,
The windows blocked, and the well-curb gone,
The haystack had grown to a mountain lift,
And the woodpile looked like a monstrous drift,
As it lay by the farmer’s door.”
The chief damage in all snow storms results from the temporary
obstruction of roads and cessation of business. No very great
destruction of human life has ever resulted, save in case of armies
overtaken by the storm. Napoleon lost four hundred and fifty thousand
men on his Russian expedition. Both armies suffered terribly in the
recent Russo-Turkish war, as they lay facing each other at Shipka Pass.
The constant accumulations of snow in the colder regions of the earth
produce those immense rivers of ice known as glaciers, the fragments
breaking from which as they enter the sea are known as icebergs. These,
borne by currents to the southward, have no small influence in modifying
the climate. In mountainous regions the accumulations of snow and ice
produce snow-slides and avalanches; but owing to their entirely local
character, the damage wrought by them is comparatively insignificant,
not even approaching the lightning in the total.
Hail has been far more destructive. As stated elsewhere, the cause of
hail is hitherto unexplained. The storm usually travels in narrow belts.
Many are the wonderful tales told of it. It is said that May 8, 1802, a
mass of ice weighing eleven hundred pounds fell in Hungary. Again, we
hear of an ice-block the size of an elephant, which fell near
Seringapatam, in the reign of Tippoo Sahib. The good father Huc, in his
travels in Tartary, reported the fall of an ice-block the size of a
millstone, which, in very warm weather, required three days to melt. And
we are told that in the time of Charlemagne, there fell hailstones
fifteen feet long, eleven feet wide and six feet thick. All these we
steadfastly do not believe.
Yet, there are well authenticated records of many disastrous hail storms
and enormous hailstones. A storm in France, in 1788, traveled in two
bands: one, four hundred and twenty by ten miles; the other, five
hundred by five miles. Five million dollars worth of property was
destroyed. In 1865 a severe storm swept a wide path from Bordeaux to
Belgium, accumulating in such masses that it was not all melted in one
or two localities for four days. One bed was one and one-fourth miles
long and two-fifths of a mile wide, containing twenty-one million cubic
feet. Doubtless similar accumulations in depressions, adhering together,
gave rise to the tales of enormous blocks mentioned above.
An enormous hail storm in India, in 1853, is said to have killed
eighty-four persons and three thousand cattle. During a storm at Naini
Tal, in 1855, hailstones weighing one and one-half pounds fell. Our own
land has had a number of severe hail storms within the past ten years,
that have done immense damage to crops, and occasionally killed cattle,
while smaller animals have perished by hundreds. Frequent are the
records of hailstones as large as oranges, goose-eggs, and occasionally
as large as a fist, with gathered drifts two or three feet deep. Europe
has also had several of her smaller towns nearly destroyed by combined
flood and hail. Yet, none of these equal in fatality the great hail
storm of two years since at Moradabad, India.
It smashed in windows, glass doors and the lighter roofs, “The verandas
were blown away by the wind. A great part of the roof fell in, and the
massive pucca portico was blown down. The walls shook. It was nearly
dark outside, and hailstones of enormous size were dashed down with a
force which I have never seen anything to equal. * * * There were long
ridges of hail one or two feet in depth. * * * Not a house in the civil
station that did not receive the most serious injury.
“Two hundred and thirty deaths in all have been reported up to the
present time. The total number may be safely put as under two hundred
and fifty. Men caught in the open and without shelter, were simply
pounded to death by the hail.”
Spain and southern France have on record some showers of extremely large
hailstones. In 1829, masses of ice weighing four and one-half pounds
fell at Cazorta, Spain. Houses were stove-in by them. During a hurricane
in the south of France, in 1844, there fell ice-masses weighing eleven
pounds.
Mysterious and ominous to those ignorant of their cause have been the
many showers of “ink, blood, sulphur,” falls of red or green snow, and
similar phenomena. Such things were believed to betoken the wrath of
God, and to forebode war, famine, pestilence, flood, and other dire
calamities. Of course, the good people knew exactly what any shower
meant--after the calamity occurred. When it didn’t occur, the shower was
simply a warning.
That such phenomena are readily explained goes without saying; and not a
few of the wise of days past have refused to be seriously alarmed,
though they could not find a correct solution of the mystery. Some of
the philosophic minds of other days endeavored to explain these
occurrences by supposing blood vaporized from battle-fields was mingled
with rain, not knowing that the red portion of the blood can not
evaporate.
The microscope has solved these mysteries. The rains of blood are merely
stained by earthy matter: sometimes organic, gathered by the wind;
sometimes volcanic dust, thrown out by eruptions; and in one case, where
numerous blood-spots appeared on houses and fences in Provence, in 1608,
and the priests asserted it was the work of the devil, the spots at
length proved to be the excrement of butterflies. Rains of melted
sulphur have been found to owe their color to the yellow pollen of pine
trees. Ink is merely sooty rain-water. Showers of this character are
more frequent than might be supposed. More than a score have occurred in
Europe in the present century; and a number in this country. Red and
green snow owe their color to microscopic vegetable life, and are quite
commonly met with in the Arctic world. One bold headland has long been
known as Crimson Cliff, from the extensive deposits of red snow there.