The Birmingham age-herald. [volume] (Birmingham, Ala.) 1902-1950, 1902-05-25
PECULIAR RAIN AND SNOW.
Showers That XIII Everything Green.
Electric Freaks-Waterspo

The rain which has been falling during
the last few weeks around the bay of
Naples, instead of making crops grow, is
killing every green thing. Vesuvius, 1t
appears, has been sending out clouds OF
vapor charged with hydrochloric acid.
The rain falling through these mists has
absorbed the acid, and so plackens and
withers every thing on which it falls.
But there is no need to go abroad for
samples of queer weather. Parts of Essex
experienced last year a shower of red
rain. 1t fell little north of Ongar short
ly after the great sandstorm which
passed northward out OF Africa over
southern Europe, and entirely spoiled a
quantity of newly washed linen hung
out to dry.
Gimlingay, in Cambridgeshire, had an
experience in 1893 which was still more
strange. One afternoon in the middle
of August in that year 1t clouded up so
heavily as to become almost dark. The
cloud broke, and there fell, not rain, but
ants. The ground, trees and roofs were
covered nearly half an incn deep with
these insects before this extraordinary
storm blew over.
Rain from a clear sky is by no means an
unknown phenomenon, even in England
:. is most usual in March and October
and in hilly districts. A few drops will
suddenly splash down out of the blue
while the sun shines with unabated bril-
liancy. In such cases the moisture has
been brought by wind from a great dis
lance across the upper heights of the
sky.
In the island of Mauritius, when south
east winds are blowing, rain often falls
from a sky of dazzling transparency.
ell t., M
places from a cloudess sky. This freak
of nature is very common in the Adiron-
dack mountains In New York. and has
been seen in the Highlands of Scotland.
1t only happens among mountains, and
is no doubt caused by a moist current
of air being chilled by some mountain
top, and so parting with its moisture,
which cold wind near the ground freezes
and carries as snow to a great distance.
Black snow aften falls in London. 1t
gains it's dingy hue from the pail of
smoke above the big city. But it was a
novel brand of black snow which fell
in the Muette valley, in Switzerland, one
Sunday last November. Not only was
this snow black, but its odor was abom-
Unable. and on examination it was seen
to be full of millions of small insects.
What they were or where they came
from, no one has up to the present been
al lie to discover.
The British isle is spared electric
snowstorms because it has no big noun
tains. But winter climbers among the
Alps have more than once been spec
tators of the most beautiful of all
weather freaks. "A shower of cold fire.
is how such a storm seen on Monte Rosa
has been described. When the st orm was
at it's height each speck of falling snow
was like a drop of white fire, and sparks
flew in streams from the tips of the
climbers fingers, his ears, nose and
beard.
Bradford experienced very queer freak
of electric weather ONE afternoon late
last year. 1t is described as IAN cleo
trical discharge, unaccompanied by thun-
der, resembling a silent thunder belt"
1t fell in churchyard. smashing monu-
ment. and breaking no fewer than seven
~ glass cases containing wreaths and
lowers. Cranage and Powder, in
Cheshire, had also their share of peculiar
weather during a thunder storm last sum-
mer. There was fall, not of haistones.
but of jagged chunks of ice, which killed
sheep and wounded horses.
Waterspouts are supposed to be con-
fined to the tropics. Shoreham, in Sussex,
knows to its cost that they sometimes
visit England Last summer a waterspout
burst on a hill north of the town. and
such body of water came roaring down
the slope that cottagers had to take
refuge in their upper stories. Twenty
acres of turnips ten Of beets and other
crops were utterly destroyed, and a
number of ducks were drowned.