The Council Bluffs nonpareil. [volume] (Council Bluffs [Iowa]) 1857-1867, 1858-08-14
From the Dubuque Times.
V0~n-Clim nuA Heal

The State of Iowa lies directly west of
the southern portion Of New England and
New York, and being thousand miles west
OF the Atlantic coast it has the advantage
of q natural law that makes the annual
temperature slightly warmer in the same
latitude further west than in the eastern
States. This difference, however, is not so
great as to offer special attractions, though
the more equable temperature and the
greater the dryness of the atmosphere is
much more conducive to health.
The annual fall of rain is less than at the
east by nearly one half and mostly occurs
ut that season of the year when vegetation
most requires it. Snow seldom falls in such
quantity rs to make sleighing more than
two or three weeks, and in some winters
there is no sleighing, except in the northern
counties. Even when no rain follows the
light SHOWS, they frequently disappear in a
few days.
The heat Of the summer is modified by
the breezes that sweep across the prairies
between the groves, almost invariably in hot
days. In winter the snow seldom drifts
except in the most exposed situations. The
absence of snow, usually, in March, makes
the spring from one to three weeks earlier
than in the same latitude in the Atlantic
States and this gives the farmer longer
time for labor in planting summer crops
In the fall, frost keeps of a week or two
later and this permits later planting of corn
and greater maturity Of some other crops.
The effects of excessive drought has not yet
been known in Iowa as in some other west
ern States. This exemption is partly owing
to the nature of the soil. being SO porous or
absorvent as to permit the moisture from a
considerable depth to rise to the surface, or
at least to the roots of plants. There is
seldom a whole month without rain except
in winter.
The number of clear days greatly exceeds
the cloudy days, notwithstanding the mete-
orologist in making his record from daily
observations marks those days cloudy when
only light feecy clouds obscure the sun a
part of the time, as is frequently the case
from ten O'Clock in the morning to four in
the afternoon. As the nights in summer
are usually clear, copious dews fall, much
to the benefit of vegetation, but the dryness
of the atmosphere soon dissipates it in the
morning. The high temperature of the
early part of summer and the sufficient, and
! in some seasons almost excessive rains, are
particularly favorable to a rapid and vigor-
Gus growth of vegetation. Hence the
prairies burned over in spring until they
present the appearance of black sea, are
covered, in three months, with a dense
growth Of grass and Towering plants, many
of them six or seven feet high.
A reference to few facts from official
meteorological tables will exhibit a striking
contrast between the climate of Iowa and
that of the East. The humidity of the
atmosphere of Iowa, by the record kept at
Dubuque, compared with that of Amherst,
Pomfret and New Bedford, in New England,
is fifteen per cent. in favor of the dryness Of
the West.
The number of cloudy days in two places
in Iowa compared with the number at Am
herst, Princeton and Williamstown is little
over one-fifth in favor of fair weather in
Iowa. The number of fair days at Water
Welt, N. Y, for a series of years, is an
average of two hundred and eleven annually,
while the record for the same length of
time, at point on the Mississippi opposite
northern Iowa shows two hundred and TWEEN
ty-three.
In the interior of the State the atmos-
phere is still dryer than in the immediate
valleys of the great rivers that border it.
The depth of rain by record kept at Du-
buque for a series of years is twenty six in
ches annually, and at Westield and SPRING
field, Mas sachusettts, it is forty seven and a
half inches, or nearly one half in favor Of
the climate of Iowa.
The operation of the natural laws pro-
ducing such results, has an important bear
ing on the health as well as the agricultural
condition of country. The same circum-
stances are here specially favorable to both.
These facts, considered in relation to the
fertile soil Of Iowa, shows that this State is
most fortunately situated for the develop
ment, by healthy peoples of all the natural
resources for which this State is already
celebrated. The mortuary statistics of the
last general census show that the average
ratio of deaths to the number living in the
thirty states enumerated was one to seven
ty-two, while the ratio for the. same time
in Iowa was as one to ninety -four, showing
difference in favor of the health, in this
State, as compared with the whole Union,
of over thirty three per cent. Such facts
prove that Iowa is one of the most healthy,
as it is we'll known to be ono of the most
fertile portions of the United States.
G..