The New York herald. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1840-1920, 1875-03-17

The Spring Floods.
AS the warm breath of spring is felt we
enter the critical period of our spring
floods and river inundations Last year
in Northwestern Europe a most grievous
water scarcity was experienced. The rivers
ran low and sluggishly; the soil was
dry, and the wells and subterranean
fountains appeared to be sealed When the
long-protracted rainlessness of last summer
in the United States occurred it seemed as if
this country would in 1875 suffer as Europe
did in 1874, and had it been so the effect
would have been most disastrous. The winter
rainfall is that most essential to the water
supply of q continent, and practically decides
the fertility of the earth for the ensuing
season. Fortunately for this Continent the
alarm excited by the summer and fall
droughts has been allayed by the copious
and widespread precipitation of snow and
rain during the winter now passing away.
These copious rains and heavy SHOWS were
due largely to the intense Polar cold, which
in January and February chilled the surface
of the earth to great depths, thus rendering it
a powerful condenser of the vapor held in
every wind that blew in upon it from the sea.
The amount of precipitation since January
has been very great, over oil the country
drained into the Gulf of Mexico and the Allan
tic Ocean. In order to get an idea Of the
amount of water stored up in the snow
crystal and ice-block on our Appalachian
slopes it must be remembered that no record
can adequately exhibit il, since the heaviest
snowfalls have taken place at inaccessible
SUBMITS. Already the floods occasioned by
the brief spells of warmer, snow-melting
weather, have given intimat;on of what may be
looked for. We begin to receive the reports
of booming freshets, food waves and ice
gorges sweeping through the waterways that
drain both the eastern and western slopes of
the Alleghanies. Three or four days of high
temperature, followed by heavy rain storm
from the Gulf, will complete the work Of ice
dissolution and dislodgement.
The sections most threatened are, appar-
emily, those on either side of the Alleghal .es
and Blue Ridge, north of Tennessee and
North Carolina The Mississippi is most re-
motely concerned in the spring floods of the
is now swollen and may soon give trouble in
Louisiana and Mississippi, as it has often
done in March. In the central part of the
Ohio Valley the highest annual foods have
occurred in connection with the melting Of
the Allegheny snow, and, though the highest
spring freshets have usually been
in February, it is not too late
for one during the present month,
which would probably be felt most disas-
trously at Louisville and below. There is
evidently like danger to the two Kanawhas
the Allegheny and Monongahela, and the trib-
utaries which enter the Upper Ohio. They
have several times experienced sudden fuc-
tuations within the past month, owing to a
temporary relaxation of the winter tempera-
ture But that they have yet carried off the
amassed winter rain and snowfall Of the
regions they drain is hardly possible, and the
great bulk of it is probably yet to be melted
and set Free
The calamites for which the country has
for many days waited in dread are upon it at
last. Our dispatches to-day show that the
Delaware, the Susquehanna, the Ten
nessee and their tributaries have burst
from confinement and are sweeping
with desolating force through the val
leys Bridges have been carried away
and much damage has been done on the Della
ware and Susquehanna This, we fear, is but
the first sad chapter of a long story of loss Of
property and perhaps of lite.