Yorkville enquirer. [volume] (Yorkville, S.C.) 1855-2006, 1899-02-22
HOT AND COLD WAVES.

HOT AND COLD WAVES.
Both Kinds Flourish Beautifully In This
Happy Land Of Freedom.
From the Baltimore American.
Speaking about cold waves and
weather in general yesterday, men,
ber of the Maryland Academy of
Sciences, said:
"We have some kinds of weather in
the United States that are unknown
abroad. Take the cold wave, for ex-
ample, that struck the far south sew
eral years ago. 1t was a record
breaker, you know, carrying the rigors
of winter to a lower latitude than has
been known for 80 years at least.
Florida suffered 100000 worth of
damage. At Pensacola the oranges
froze hard on the trees. The ther-
mometer at Tampa fell to 18' above
zero, five degrees below the lowest
ever noted. At Orange Park ice two
inches thick formed on ponds. A cold
wave of equal severity, it is said,
struck the fowery peninsula IN 1885,
but temperatures were not recorded
with reliable accuracy.
"Cold waves are unknown in Eu-
rope. We may justly pride ourselves
upon them as an American institution.
It is the same way with billiards..
Who ever heard of a blizzard in Eu-
roper
"Cold waves are very strange phe-
nomena. Nobody knows with certain
ty where they come from or how they
are formed. They are formed some
where inland in the far northwest, in
the latitude of greatest cold, which, as
you know, is good way south of the
north pole. At the uorthspele" 1t Is
probably comparatively warm, and
that extremity of the earth's axis is
perhaps surrounded by an open and
unfrozen sea. AS for the typical cold
wave, my belief is that it is composed
of air drawn from the higher and more
frigid regions of the atmosphere. AS
cend to an attitude of 80 miles above
the earth's surface and you might find
a rarefied air at temperature of lOO'
below zero, or even much lower. The
body of cold formed by the downrush
of this frigid air from above starts on
Journey eastward across the continent,
travelling at the speed of fast rail-
way train, 35 or 40 miles an hour. AS
it proceeds it spreads out. Obviously
the cold air would be gradually warm
ed during the trip unless the waves
were replenished with cold in some
fashion. My notion is that while the
wave is in transit fresh cold is contin-
ually drawn into it from above, where
there is always an unlimited supply of
air at an extremely low temperature.
Finally, the wave passes off over the
ocean. In some manner the Allegheny
mountains seem to interrupt the pas
sage of cold waves, to certain extent,
as if the cold air was banked up
against that range of hills, and its
passage thus impeded. On this &C
count it is very difficult to predict cold
waves for the region of Baltimore and
Washington.
"The lowest temperature ever re-
corded on the earth was taken at
Werchojansk, in the interior OF Sibe-
ria, January Is, 1885. 1t was go and
a fraction below zero. Werchojansk is
in the latitude of the pole of cold.
There the earth is frozen to depth of
about 100 feet, and in the warmest sea-
son it never thaws. The highest tenn
perature recorded is 1240 and a frac-
ton, taken in Algeria, July II, 1870.
The lowest temperature on record in
the United States is go below zero, at
Tobacco Garden, N. D. Greedy, the
arctic explorer, has probably e1per-
fenced a wider range of temperature
than any other living man. He record
ed 6Oo below zero at Fort Conger, on
Lady Franklin Bay. On another oc-
casion, in the Maricopa desert of Ari-
zona, his thermometer in the shade ran
no to 1140 above. A lucifer match
dropped upon the burning sands OF Sa-
hara will catch fire. 1t is very diff
cult, even with the finest Thermometers,
to get accurate records of the extreme
tenn peratures, and on that account such
observations in general are to be re-
garded as only approximately correct"