Green-Mountain freeman. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1844-1884, 1873-06-04
From the New York journal of Commerce
Philosophy of the Tornado.

From the New York journal of Commerce.
Philosophy of the Tornado.
Some people who have never seen lorna
do at work, or visited places it has made des-
olate, may suspect the iowa reporters of ex-
aggeration. But there is no exhibition of
power incredible in full-blowing tornado.
Its general movement is hundred miles an
hour, and its rotary motion one of unesti
mated rapidity. The atmosphere, itself
material and ponderable substance, is COM
pressed in the whirl and dashed against all
objects with the force of thousand batter
ing rams. An explosion of gunpowder is
merely the release of pent-up gases, them
selves of great tenuity, but producing the
known results by the speed Of their initial
motion. Water, a soft, yielding body in its
quiescent state, is capable of lifting up stones
hundreds Of tons in weight and hurling them
high upon the beach. In all these cases the
force of the first impact supplies the want of
solidity in the materials which do the mis-
chief as is again illustrated by the familiar
experiment of shooting a tallow candle
through board. 4 priorl, there is nothing
in the least surprising in the accounts re-
ceiyed of the Iowa whirlwind. 1t could tear
up trees and blow down the strongest houses
and stone walls, and bear human beings, cat
tie, hogs, sheep, and everything else in its
path, through the air for quarter or half
mile or any other distance. Some of the
most extraordinary of the statements ma de
prove themselves, as where it is said that
large trees were driven deep into the ground
at long distance from where they were up
rooted. This is precisely what the tornado
might be expected to do witt trees. Thrown
by the mighty hand of the wind, they would
be only javellns or arrows, of which the trunk
would represent the shaft and the top the
feathered part. 1t is said that old stumps
over which the cyclone swept were, in some
instances, cut off, fresh and smooth, as by q
circular saw; this would be in conformity
with a well-known law of tornadoes, which,
when passing over level surfaces, do not
quite touch the ground, but expend all their
force within few feet of it. The inconceiv-
ably rapid whirl of the air would operate
exactly like saw upon the stumps, as above
described. But when it comes to Il house,
or a forest. or a hillock, or any large-sized
object which obstructs its way, then its pow
er seems to be eXerted downward then it
strikes into the earth and roots up every
thing. One of the Iowa stories speaks of
scooping out cellars, stones, human inmates
and all, which is not at all improbable. We
lack exact information about the width of
this tornado's path. Prob .bly it WAS very
narrow, not more than two hundred or three
hundred feet, the Intensity of the action be-
ing proportioned to the concentration at the
base. A cyclone in Connecticut many years
ago left devastated path Of not over two
hundred feet, leveling all objects in its course,
and not even breaking the boughs of trees
just outside that limit Its swa.h was as
we'll defined IS d mowers in the bayfield,.
Many years since, a tornado ruck piece OF
country near Kearsarge mountain, New
Hampshire, and prostrated every giant tree
in belt about three hundred feet wide,
finally passing up the side of Kearsarge and
breaking its force on the summit The
path of this tornado, straight and clean cut,
could be seen lor a long time on the noun
tain's side. Ii follows from these facts that
if one is apprised OF the approach of tor
nado in season, and notes the direction of the
wind that precedes it, he may possibly es-
cape its effects. But it generally sweeps too
suddenly upon its prey to permit this. Fort
unately, in this country, such cyclones as
that OF Iowa are among the rarest Of phe-
nomena.
Two very remarkable meteorological &C.
be worth the while for scientific persons to
see if they we're not conditions precedent of
that grand climax. One was the wonderful
solar halo seen on Monday, the Goth, in this
city and vicinity, and we do not know where
else Some authorities speak of this as not
Uncommon phenomenon and that is true
of some circles which appear about the sun,
but this particular one was very marked and |
striking. The attention of the most careless |
observer was powerfully attracted to it, and |
its import wonderngly guessed at. Tohse |
halos have been explained on the theory of |
the presence of small iee-crystals moving 10 |
the upper air, and when coming between the |
spectator and the sun, causing the appari-
ton of the halo by their united refracting
power. Their passage through the air in
great numbers, so as to produce the phe-
nomenon of solar halo, indicates, We may
suppose, violent disturbance in the atmos-
phere and rresages storms. The movement |
begun in this part of the country may, per-
hans. have terminated in the frightful cy-
clone of Iowa. The other prodigy OF which |
we would speak occurred in Iowa, as far
back as the 14th instant, or week before |
the tornado burst forth. At Des Moines,
Iowa. and at other places in the State, the
air was filled wifi electricity, although no
storm occurred. For several hours it was
impossible to work the telegraph wires; but
that was the least astonishing cart of the
manifestations On the eastern-bound ex-
press train on the Rock Island road the track
seemed a road of fire under and behind the
cars. The light was so vivid as to illuminate
the track for some distance In the rear. One
observer describes it as '' trailing banner
of flame" This, of course, was Immediate
ly caused by the friction of the car-wheels,
but the atmosphere must have been very
highly charged with electricity to permit its
exhibition through such simple agency.
Des Moines is only nine miles from the CEN
ter of the tornado track, and that city her
self suffered to some extent from thunder
storm on the eventful 22d instant. The in
cidents to which we have referred are sepa-
rated by time or space from the Iowa lorna
do, but that is no reason why they should be
summarily rejected from the equation: Ma
ture works fast in some things and slow in
others. 1t is well settled fact that the
greatest commissions of the elements, which
come upon US suddenly, as if without warn,
ing, are, in fact, slowly prepared, ana
heralded by minor phenomena for weeks De-
forehand This is known to be the law IN
respectof volcanic eruptions and earthquakes;