The evening world., 1894-09-20
5.2o INCHES OF RAIN FELL.
That Was the Record Made by the
Storm Of Yesterday.
Farmer Dunn Tells Why It Wasn't
an Equinoctial Affair.

while the total rainfall during the
storm which broke over New York at 6
o'clock Tuesday morning, and which
lasted until 7.20 o'clock last night, does
not equal the record, Wednesday, Sept.
10, 1894, will be known In history as a
record-breaking day just the same.
From o'clock yesterday morning
until 7.2O o'clock last night, when the
storm was over, 4.19 inches of rain had
fallen over ehis city. That is the great
est ever known for the same space of
time-a little less than twelve hours.
Previous to 8 A, NJ. yesterday, only
100 inches had fallen, making total of
SIS inches.
As told in THE Evening World" yes
terday, the greatest rainfall ever known
fol-, any one STERN stern was Sept: Y and %.
and II. 1890 when SIP inches descended
on New York. Both storms. however,
were for the full twenty-four hours.
o'clock, last night. 1t stopped for
time, but about midnight 1t gave its
last expiring effort and an hour later
had died. That last effort gave g-1OO
OF an inch. but 1t was so insignificant
that Farmer Dunn would not let it so in
the record.
The storm has gone the way of all
the Others, and nothing is left Of it
save memory, wet cellars, ruined
umbrellas and wllted laundry. 1t is fair
today, and Farmer Dunn, says. It will
remain 50. and that It will be fair and
cool tomorrow. Old Humidity. too, has
seemingly got ashamed of himself He
made a great bluff this morning, when,
at O'Clock, he started out with a per-
eentage of Is. Then he weakened, and
at 10 o'clock he had dropped down to
q. The mercury at that time stood at
the same figure.
On the west side, however. up in the
Twenty-third and Twenty-fourth Wards,
and In certain sections of Brook
l lySTD;r the mors storm has left some me
sewers in Brooklyn were not half big
enough to carry off the water which
backed up into the cellars of houses in
District streets have been closed up on
account of many cave-ins, and on the
west side the bucket brigade has been
Farmer Dunn is annoyed at the at
tempts made to call the storm an equi-
noctial affair. he gives a lot Of reac.
the kind, and that in fact. no such thing
as an equinoctial storm could happen.
This latest, he said, was an ordinary
everyday storm, which gathered in
Mexico Monday. 1t moved along with
the ordinary atmospheric Conditions and
developed no energy of any kind until
yesterday morning.
1.-The cyclonlc season." he said, "usu-
ally begins from the time the sun
starts to go south, and takes in the
power on account OF the sun leaving
the North. The great amount of evapo-
ration that takes place over the tropi-
cal regions and the South is due to
this travelling of the sun towards the
| EQUATOR but the evaporation during this
= time Is so rapid and such an enormous
amount Is gathered into the atmosphere
that 1t becomes a powerful factor in the
| storms.
1T is not because the sun crosses the
| equator on any given day" Mr.. Dunn
continued that causes the rain-storm.
There Is no earthly reason to suppose
that when the sun reaches the equator
II Is going to spring a trap and open
the sluice gates. You might as well
say that when the sun reaches any other
point storms must necessarily follow.
Most of the tropical storms develop
and move northward long before the sun
gets to the equator at all This storm,
for instance, developed in Mexico Mon
day and moved northward to the middle
Atlantic coast. This in spite of the fact
that the sun does not get as far as the
equator until tomorrow.
However there is no use in trying to
kill off this story OF equinoctial storms.
il is theory of long standing, and, like
al of its kind, very hard to change.
There are dozens of other theories that
have as little truth in them"
Nearly all of the fog which accom-
panied the recent storm has disap-
peared. The temperature Is stationary
over the Atlantic States. In the North
west 1t Is a little warmer to-day, and
4, the Central States, cooler. The wind
at o'clock had toned down to twelve
miles an hour