Wood County reporter. [volume] (Grand Rapids [i.e. Wisconsin Rapids], Wis.) 1857-1923, 1873-03-27

it is needless to state. Glaciers were in
request for weeks afterwards. Like
rain, hail is formed when two or more
strata of clouds overlie one another, but
with difference IN their respective physi-
cal conditions.
Hail is produced during tempests,
when the temperature, very high at the
surface of the earth, decreases rapidly at
loftier attitudes. In that case the upper
clouds consist of icy particles, the middle
strata of watery vesicles below the freezs
ing point, and the lower strata of vesi-
cles above the freezing point. Usually
those clouds travel in different directions,
and hail is produced when a conflict of
opposing winds compels mixture of
clouds of such different temperatures.
The rain drops resulting, instantly frozen,
have the time during their fall to increase
in size by the condensation of water on
their surface, and not seldom by combi-
nation, to unite into large and destructive
hailstones
The formation of hailstones is always
rapid. The clouds from which they fall
are never spread over very wide area
Sailing before the wind they pound and
riddle strips of land often less than mile,
and rarely ten miles, wide, although the
length of the strips passed over is some
times considerable. Hailstones have been
picked up weighing more than half
pound avoirdupois. In some instances,
this weight, on credible authority, has
been very much exceeded. On such &C.
casions, it is not surprising that trees
should be stripped of their leaves anu
branches, the larger animals mutiated,
"small deer" and game killed outright
The greater the development of electricity
in tempest, the greater is the tendency
of downfall of hail. Hail occurs prin-
cipally IN summer and in the afternoon;
namely, under the meteorological condi-
tions that have just been mentioned
great heat at the surface of the soil, rap
idly diminishing higher up in the air, with
strong clOud-evapOrationu under the action
of the sun. Nevertheless, as the simple
conflict of an upper very cold wind with
very hot one raised to the same lofty
region, may bring about the formation of
hail, it sometimes falls in winter, and
sometimes in the night, but those are the
exceptions rather than the rule.
AS water, during its metamorphosis
into snow, assumes beautiful starlike
form, SO does the dissection of ice, by
heat, prove that it possesses similar
structure. The architecture of the ice
over which we skate is quite as wonderful
as the flowers of the snow. All our lake
ice is built of six-rayed stars wonderfully
interlaced. To see them, take slab Of
pond ice, and place it in the path of a
concentrated sun beam. But ice and
water are so OFFICIALLY alike, that unless
the light fall properly upon the flowers,
you will not detect them. Catching the
right angle of illumination, from separate
spots of the ice little shining points are
seen to sparkle forth. Every one of those
points is surrounded by a beautiful liquid
flower with six petals, lying in all cases
parallel to the surface of freezing. The
central spot is vacuum. Ice swims on
water because, bulk for bulk, it is lighter
than water; so that when ice is melted it
shrinks in size. The liquid flowers can
not then occupy the whole space of the
ice melted. A little empty space is
formed in the center of the flowers, and
this space, or rather its surface, shines in
the sun like FURNISHED silver.-AN tie
Year Round