Connecticut western news., 1871-09-01
Storms and the Signal Service Bureau.

The immense area of the United States, with its interminable lines of telegraph, providesca field for meteorological ob- servations that is wonderful to contem- plate. AS we have already noted, a storm approaching the Atlantic coast is an- nounced two days in advance of it's reaching a given point. One signal ob- server gathers up the first threatning dis turbances of the elements as they fret at the base of the Rocky Mountains, and traces them along, for the storm makes slow time compared with the electric telegraph until the fully developed storm reaches the New England coast.
 Or, a cheery but unusual wind is felt in the Mexican Gulf, at Key Vest or Galveston; the barometer falls suddenly j; the indications are that a series of dis trlrbances are taking place somewhere in the atmosphere. Presently the storm, gathering it's forces in our semi tropical regions, commences it's journey toward the North. It is traced along, gather ing intensity in its progress, until the telegraph reports it at New Orleans. The wind and the rain follow, and dash over the s'Crescent City" The steamers start from their moorings, and the deep, muddy river is lashed into fury, and seems molten copper under the glare of the continuous lightning; the sugar cane and cotton-fields are desolated j; when suddenly the storm, now fairly launched, turns into the great highway of the Mississippi Valley, rushes along twelve hundred miles, until 1t reaches St. Louis, deluging that city in rain, and possibly wrecking some of its more Io o1i +o cko more mischief, it will strike off toward Chicago and the great lakes, moving Westwardly, Northwardly, then East W; rdly, until striking the Atlantic off the coast of Newfoundland, the discontented and ruin scattering child of the tropics is finally lost in the intense cold of the Northern attitudes. '.|.'t.
 And the history of the four days pro- gress of this storm-days consumed by it's journey through the heart of the continent not only given, but the ar rival of the storm at every important place is anticipated, and it's conduct along the route is kept with unfaltering precision and the most scientific care. Twenty-Five miles an hour is shown by signal service operations, to be the aver age velocity of a storm when it has twice that velocity it becomes tornado. Now, storm proper, starting from the foot of the Rocky Mountains, and trav- cling toward the Atlantic coast, even if severe in its demonstration, IS beaten all the way by the railway train, which av- erages more rapidity in its movements than the ordinary storm while the tele- graphic message, no matter how much headway storm and railway ears have made, passes both, and arrives at it's des- tination without any real perception of consumed time.
 The wind in the upper currents, as marked by the Mount Washington observations of last winter, is often rushing past at the rate of one hundred miles an hour. When it was of this great velocity, at Portland, sixty miles away, the weather was perfectly calm and clear.
 On the 9th of March, 1871, Mount Washington observation, the wind was blowing fifty miles; at Portland, two miles, Balloons sometimes reach an al titude where the wind is blowing hun dred miles an hour These winds in the high air are almost exclusively from a Southerly direction--many from the equator toward the poles. But this rule is not imperative, for the surface of the earth, by its heat and cold, affects the direction of the high winds. Phenome- nal winds are cyclones, one of the sever est of which known in history, few years ago swept over some portions of English India.