Belmont chronicle. [volume] (St. Clairsville, Ohio) 1855-1973, 1889-06-13
AN ERIAI. BATTLE.
THE WHIRL OF THE ATMOSPHERIC CUR
RENTS THAT CAUSED THE GREAT
RAIN STORMS.

I RENTS THAT CAOSED lBE UIAEA4
RAIN STORMS.
New York Sun, June 3.
The atmospheric conditions accOmpa-
nying the great downpour Of rain that
deluged at least half of the country east
of the Mississippi River on Friday and
Saturday, and caused the eliminating
disaster at Johnstown, were not less re
markable than those attending the biz
zard of last year. On Friday morning
a great rm-center which had, as usu-
al, advanced from the Northwest, lay in
a vast oval, narrowing toward the South,
which stretched from Lake Huron to
South Carolina Behind it, both on the
Northwest and Southwest, were two
strongly developed areas of high press
ure, which crowded close upon the low
storm center and created steep barOm-
etic gradients, the natural result of which
which was high winds blowing down
the atmospheric slope toward the area
of depression. On the Atlantic side
was a still greater high-preSsure area,
or anti-cyclone, whose center of press
ure over Nova Scotia and New Bruins
wick lay exactly in the path that the
storm would naturally follow. The cy-
clone was thus surrounded, and its prog
ress was arrested, so that it remained
perforce lowering over the country be-
tween the lakes and the Atlantic coast
| line, pouring down its accumulated
moisture in sheets of rain as its rapidly
rising air currents were reinforced by
the thrush of moist surface air from the
seabOard and the lakes.
This was a condition of things remark
ably like that which prevailed during
the blizzard, for then, too, cyclone
from the West closely pressed from be-
hind by areas of high barometer, had its
progress arrested by an immOvable an
ti-cyclone resting upon the ocean. In
the case of the blizzard the cyclone CEN
ter was disrupted, splitting up into two
storms, one of which moved North and
lost itself in the wilds of Canada. The
same thing occurred on Friday night
when the cyclone, whose very center
had hung over Western Pennsylvania
all day, was divided, the high pressure
from the Southwest having apparently
been driven into it like a wedge. This
time the line of retreat of the principal
part of the cyclone was toward the
Southeast, across Virginia and North
Carolina, which in turn received its
| floods of rain.
BY Saturday morning the Northern
half of the disrupted cyclone seems to
have gathered its forces again, and an
unusually deep depression was formed
over Lake Huron. The anti-cyclOne
eentered over Nova Scotia in the mean
time had not given way an inch, and SO
the advance of this Northern cyclone
as far as it showed any advance at all
after the disruption of Friday night,
was straight toward the North, although
the regular course of such storms is
Eastward.
All over the great area covered by the
storm on Friday and Saturday the sym
| bols of the weather show that the land
was hidden by dark curtain of clouds
under the center of which the tremen-
dous tragedy of the Conemaugh was en-
acted. 1t is not often that so broad
region is completely yelled from the
sight of our possible contemporaries in
other planets, and it is an interesting
reflection that astronomers in Mars
armed with telescopes equal to ours
could unquestionably have beheld the
great cloud that brought gloom and dis
aster to so fair spot on the earth, JUS
as our astronomers have often watched
the advance of vast clouds across thu
surface of Mars and wondered what wa!
going on beneath them.