Belmont chronicle. [volume] (St. Clairsville, Ohio) 1855-1973, 1889-08-15
A YEAR OF FLOODS.
EXTRAORDINARY SERIES OF DISASTERS
FROM CLOUD-BURSTS.
r.,

4
FROM CLOUD-BURSTs.
From the New York Tribune.
The destructive food in and near
Plainfeld, n. j., on Tuesday of last
week, adds one more to an extraordina-
ry list of calamities, due to exceptional
rainfall, which this country has witness
ed in the last nine or ten weeks. OF
these the disaster in the COnemaugh
Valley was the worst, so far as devasta-
tiOn is concerned, and also, perhaps, in
the actual downpour, which, over the
Alleghenies, exceeded eight inches of
water in forty-eight hours. Next in
rank, as measured by money loss lover
S1,000,00O) was the torrent which fell
upon Chicago the preceding Saturday;
the amount of rain there, over four inch
es in four hours, beating the record in
that city for twenty years, although it
was nearly matched December "a, 1878,
with 4.18 inches in twenty-four hours.
| The cloud burst near JOhnstoWn, n. j.,
July 9, the inundatiOn of UniOntown
and Belletown, Kan, June II, wide
spread ruin of crops and destruction of
homes in Northern Texas, July l, exten-
tensive washouts near Kansas City, May
II, the submerging of the treasure vaults
in Washington, July l, a fall of over
five inches of rain at Davenport, Iowa,
in six hours, July 13, and, if one may be-
lieve the local paper, of eleven inches in
eleven hours at Linden, Tenn, the same
day and night, are only a few items in
an astonishing succession of cloud
bursts, tornadoes and local electrical
storms which are without precedent in
recent years in the regions visited. Near
" every State this side of the Missouri
River, and even Colorado and Oregon,
have contributed to the score. After
making all proper discounts, the gener
al fact remains that this is an unusual
season in respect to both the number and
intensity of these disturbances.
A Worldwide VISITATION.
Nor has America been the only scene
of such catastrophes. The mighty forces
of nature which have done such terrible
work here have also been active in other
lands. Many houses in Ber-le-Duc, De-
partment of the Meuse, France. were
undermined, and crops and vineyards
over wide areas near by were wasted by
an overflow of the river June 21. In
Hong Kong, on May % and 30, the
time when Johnstown, Pa, met her fate,
twenty-nine and half inches of rain
fell in thirty-three hours, wrecking hum
dreds of homes, impairing the city wa
ter works, destroying property valued
at 100000, and leaving the place look
ing as if it were the victim of an earth
quake; while, three days later, seven or
eight villages in the Chang Ping and
Ping Yuen districts of China were an
initiated by a er-dragOn,' which cov
cred wide stretch of level country to
the depth of thirty-six feet and drowned
5000 people.
Science is not yet prepared to say
much in explanation of this plentitude
of local storms, and their exceptional
severity. In a general way, of course,
the sun is recognized as the chief factor
in our terrestrial weather changes: and
of late years certain theorists have tried
to convince the world that varying de-
grees of ebullitiOn in the gaseous envel-
ope of that orb, as betokened by more
or fewer sunspots, are attended by cor
responding changes in the earth's at
mOsphere.
THE SUNSPOT THEORY.
Prof. Balfour Stewart, of Edinburg,
regards the sunspot not as a cause, but
as symptom; greater heat emanatlng
with greater commotiOn, as thus indiea-
ted; and rice UerSa. If more sunspOts
lead to more heat, then, here on the
earth, they would mean more evapora-
ton, especially near the equator, in
creased flow of air toward the poles, and
greater burden of water-vapor carried
from the tropics to be precipitated as
rain under favorable conditions. 1t
would then be easy to explain the alb
normally high barometer over the North
Atlantic this summer, the prevalent hu-
midity and our swarm of clOud-bursts.
But the connection is not established.
Elaborate tests with the actinOmeter
and exhaustive comparisons of data
fail to show the supposed fluctuatlon IN
the suns heat; which makes Langley,
Young and other eminent scientists
very skeptical about all this sunspot
talk.
One of the most earnest advocates of
the doctrines, H. G.. Maine, of the Ro-
chester Democrat, a layman in science,
but an intelligent and honest observer,
believes that the sun produces many of
those local and general storms by means
of electricity; the well known relation
between sunspots and magnetic storms
being cited in support of that notion
Investigation along that particular line
of thought, however, has not yet been
conclusive,