The record-union., 1891-12-15
INJURIOUS WEATHER REPORTS.

Weather Service Bureau at San francisco
is Objectionable. He is probably very
competent man for the locality with
which he is familiar, a far Eastern State,
for instance, but in State SO varied in
its topography, attitudes and climates as
California no man should act for the
Weather Bureau who is not familiar with
the peculiar conditions that prevail here.
The following we clip from San Fran
cisco daily journal:
81 guess the rain has left us for the present"
said Robert 4. Kerkam, Chief of the Signal
Service Bureau, this morning to Post re-
porter.
tThe rains throughout the State during the
past twenty-four hours have been light and
scattering, the heaviest fall being reported
from Alta, where there was .39 OF an inch.
At Elmo, Delano and Derunda .25 OF an inch
fell.
"But while the rain has been very light the
snow has been coming down heavily. In ex-
Yada from one to five inches of snow fell DUR
ing the past twenty-four hours.
''The Inhabitants of some sections must ex-
perience considerable difficulty in getting
around.
''There are SO inches of snow on the ground
at Cisco, 80 at Cascade, Az at the Summit, 20
at Blue Canyon and "a inches at Emigrant
Gap. People certainly need snoWshoes in that
part of the country"
Now every Californian of any consid-
erably extended residence in the State
knows that such report read at the East
will, in seven cases out of ten, be read
enormously. The average fastener does
not reflect that these sections are in the
upper Sierras, that the altitude is greater
than that of most of the mountain re-
nights is not phenomenal, but to be ex-
pected and common.
1t is essential that when Weather Bu-
reau agents speak Of snow falling in CAL
ifornia they ought to be exact and truth
full, and give the attitudes where snow
storms occur, or say that the sections are
in the mountains. When this is not done
the Eastern reader is justified in conclud-
ing that the claim of green fields, fowery
plains and sunny skies, made by Califor-
mans for their winter" is a fiction, and
that the stories of the late boomers of the
south, of snow and ice and frozen
trees, and houses buried in snowdrifts in
Northern and Central California, were,
after all, true. Against official substan-
tiation of the kind quoted, the truth can
not make headway.
The Eastern man is told by Mr.. Ker-
kan that we have thirty-nine inches of
snow at Cisco, forty-two at Cascade and
twenty-five at Blue Canyon. But he is
not told that these places are upon back
bone ridge Of some 1000 feet hight in the
Sierras, on the extreme eastern border of
early and remains late in greater or less
depths.
People in those parts, says the Weather
Chief, "need snow-shoes," )" and his Eastern
readers, who are unaware that he is
speaking of lofty exposed mountain
hight, can be pardoned for the conclusion
that Californians who assert that snow
here is so rare that only at widely sepa-
rated periods does it fall in the valleys or
foothills, are ''born liars"
Our Eastern brethren, to whom deep
SHOWS upon the level, and snow tunnels
to the barn, and snowdrifts to the house
caves, are common affairs, are 10th to be-
lieve the truth about California. as against
such official certifcation. 1t is true that
at Cisco and Blue Canyon and the other
points the snow lies heavy and deep; it is
also true that in California proper, at the
same moment the plows are turning deep
burrows of rich soil, and that the green
grass is springing.