The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1894-02-04
IT'S A FREAK WINTER.
All Sorts Of Natural Phenomena Re-
ported from Everywhere.
From the New York Press,

pOILeQ from everywhere
From the New York Press
Washington, Jan. 29-This is a freak
winter. With the snow line 500 miles
north of where it ordinarily is during
January, the entire winter wheat region
has been bare. That important crop has
been exposed to destruction by the always
possible sudden cold wave. Meanwhile,
people all over the country have been
sending to the weather bureau reports of
out of the way meteorological phenomena
unusually varied and peculiar.
There have been showers of angle
worms in New York and showers of land
snails in Ohio. A box full of the latter,
to furnish proof, was sent to Washington
by express. They were about the size of
pinheads. Instead of falling from the
sky, they must have been brought out of
the ground by the wet. Worms a2d small
toads are fetched out of the earth under
like conditions, appearing in great num-
bers after storms, and thus give rise to
stories that they have ra:ned down.
Spring showers of what used to be taken
for sulphur occur in Washington
every year. When the sky clears
the cutters are found choked with yellow
stuff. Under the microscope, however. it
is quickly seen to be vegetable. 1t is
merely the pollen of pine trees, blown
from forests many miles distant
People in all parts of the United States
are constantly reporting such freaks to
the weather bureau, with demands for
explanations. Often the puzzles thus pro-
pounded are too difficult for Uncle Sans
professional prophets to solve.
SHOWERS OF BLOOD.
No fewer than twenty-one showers of
blood" have been recorded during the
present century in Europe and Algeria.
These phenomena excited widespread con-
steration in ancient and even compare
lively recent times. They were regarded
as dire portents. They are accounted for
by very commonplace reasons. In 1870
shower of this kind fell at the Hague and
caused great excitement. A level-headed
physician got little of the crimson fluid
and examined it under the microscope
He found that it was filled with small red
animalcules, which proved to be species
of water flea. Doubtless they were
brought from a great distance by wind
and deposited with the rain.
In March, 1918, the people of Gerce, in
Calabria, saw a terrific cloud advancing
from the sea. 1t gradually changed from
a pale to fiery red, shutting off the
light of the sun. The town, being envel-
oped in darkness, the inhabitants rushed
to the cathedral. supposing that the end
of the world was come. Meanwhile the
strange cloud covered the whole heavens,
and amid peals of thunder and flashes of
lightning, red rain fell in large drops,
which were imagined by the excited
populace to be of blood Analysis after
ward made of the fluid showed that its
coloring matter was a dust of an earthly
taste. Probably this dust was elected by
an active volcano, carried a great dis
lance by the wind, and precipitated by
the rain.
RAIN oE INK.
"There was rain of ink in the city of
Montreal on Nov. 9, 1919. Some of the
liquid, collected and forwarded to New
York for analysis, was discovered to owe
its hue entirely to SCOT. The explanation
of it was that there had previously been
immense forest fires south of the Ohio
river, the season being remarkably dry
and the sooty particles from the conhagra-
tion had been conveyed by strong winds
northward, so as to mingle with the rain
when IL fell,
In 1924, in a district of Persia, there
was an abundant shower of nutritious
substance strange to the people. Cattle
and sheep deyoured it greedy, and bread
was made from it. 1t proved to be kind
of lichen. Large quantities of vegetable
materials are always floating in the air.
Astronomers have frequently mistaken
such organic bodies for meteorites as they
passed across the field of the telescope.
They were finally discovered to be mostly
the feathered seeds of plants carried by
the breeze.
FISHES IN THE AIR,
Small marine fishes are sometimes found
scattered about on dry land far from sea-
They are transported by storms, which at
first take the form of waterspouts, suck
ing up the fnny creatures, together with
a portion of their native element, and car
rying them shoreward Showers of frogs
and the levae of aquatic insects are pro-
duced in a similar fashion by tornadoes.
The "cyclone twister' will sometimes
suck pond dry in passing.
Tornadoes are the most extraordinary
and among the most destructive of atmos-
pheric phenomena. 1t has been reckoned
that, on an average, each of them costs
one life. That which struck Louisville in
1890 wiped out 81, $50, 900 worth of property
and 1876 lives. The funnel shaped cloud
which does the damages run at speed of
from forty to eighty miles an hour.
POWER OF ToRNADoEs.
No structure that can be raised by man
above the surface of the earth will resist
this kind of storm. 1t perpetrates many
extraordinary freaks, plucking chickens
bare without hurting them, tearing the
hair from women's heads and twisting it
into ropes, and stripping people naked
and covering them with mud. Every
of mud 1t has been known to take up a
carpet from the floor, to which it was Sc
curely tackled, and carry it out of the
house without tearing it. On one occa-
sion piece of scantling seven feet long
YVES driven lengthwise through the body
of hog.
A SILVER THAw.
One of the most wonderful of atmos-
pheric freaks at this wintry season is the
''silver thaw," which clothes the trees in
shining coats of ice, every twig sparkling
in the sunlight. Yet few take the trouble
to inquire how this comes to pass. 1t is
very simple At the beginning of thaw,
the air laden with water, passes over the
1oughs and twigs, and the moisture it
contains is frozen upon them. Every
year stories of great hailstones are circu-
lated in the newspapers. Some as big as
elephants are said TO have fallen in India,
and they have been fairly well authenti-
Gated. Unfortunately, however. these
vera doubtless aggregations of hailstones,
partly melted together.
Delicate Ourang-OutanRs.