Saint Mary's beacon. [volume] (Leonard Town, Md.) 1867-1983, 1883-05-24

AS accounts come In OF the recent
tornadoes the worse they get. The
loss Of life, it is now thought, will
reach as high as S3, while a great
many are so badly hurt that they will
be long in recovering. The effects
of fright upon the nervous, the old
and sick were also terrible, and some
will never get over the experience
The destruction to property in town
and country is incalculable. lorna
does, or as they are sometimes improp-
eriy called, cyclones name belong
ing to great ocean storms-are so
frequent in this country that it is a
serious misfortune that more is not
known about them. There are of
course plenty of theories, and there
have been abundant suggestions as to
how they might be prevented, or
rather their tremendous power for
mischief practically disarmed. Va
rious interesting pamphlets have been
written to show at what time these
storms mas be expected, the premon-
itory symptoms for a day or two in
advance. the course and shape they
are likely to take, and also how COM
munities may be signaled ahead of
them, aud measures have been detail
ed by which their fury may be de6ed.
Perhaps some of these things have
been tried, and there can hardly be
a doubt Of it, as the tornado is the
terror of life in the west, and those
liable TO encounter them would not
be likely to neglect any means Of re-
lief. But the results of such exper-
iments have clearly not availed any
thing. Recent experience shows, as
has often been shown before, that
that these phenomena are of most er-
ratio character, and that they devel-
op so suddenly-almost so instanta-
neously-that it is impossible to make
any provisions to meet them. Peo.
pie, animals. houses, everything is
blown away in the twinkling Of an
eye. The late tornadoes, for instance,
developed simultaneously aud wholly
apart from one another, and the only
inference reasonably certain is that
they must have had some common
origin.
The most plausible theory about
tornadoes and cyclones is that put
forth by Professor Tice, although it
is not really original with him, but
was first suggested. as far as he could
discover, by the Jesuit Father Bac-
caria, considerably more than CEN
tlry ago. This idea is that all phe-
nomena like these recent storms are
of electric origin. Prof. Tice asserts
that wind has nothing to do with
them. There is no wind, strong or
otherwise" he says, in a recent com
munication to a Western paper,
"when and while the tornado does its
destructive work. But those who
oppose my system assume that there
is one, and that when it enters the
vortex its velocity is from sixty to
eighty miles an hour, and within a
few hundred feet to centre Of vortex
its velocity is accelerated to 800 miles
and upward per hour. Whatever
may be the velocity with which air
moves in the vortex of tornado-in
my new work / prove it by indubitable
facts to be not less than us miles per
hour-outside Of the immediate inhu-
ence of the vortex there is generally
a dead calm" He instances facts that
In tornadoes stone houses were level
ed down to the foundation. and every
stone swept away, while within sixty
feet from where they stood straw
sheds were untouched; that a spade
leaning against tree, standing with
in four feet Of house swept away,
was not thrown down that hay bins
were lifted from the hay and carried
on but not an atom Of hay was re-
moved. In the latter case be asks
how it Is possible with the wind strik-
ing the bins with a velocity Of 900
miles per hour, 70 leave the hay un-
moved when uncovered. Everything
shows, he asserts, that outside the
whirling vortex there j. calm air.
Certainly strange circumstances have
happened during he prevalence of tor
nadoes, and there have been numerous