Yorkville enquirer. [volume] (Yorkville, S.C.) 1855-2006, 1911-07-18
WATERSPoUTS.
Facts and Fiction Concerning This
Phenomenon.

mariner saw malevolent living mons
ter, sea dragon"
Ell Masudi, writing in 954 A. D. thus
records the beliefs current in his day:
| There are timmins (dragons) in the
Atlantic seas. Some believe this is a
wind arising in a whirling column
from the bottom Of the sea- Some say
II is a black serpent rising In the air
and succeeded by terrible wind.
Some say that it is terrible animal
living in the bottom of the sea. Some
say they are black serpents passing
from the desert into the sea and living
500 years. Abbu Abbas says they are
killed in the clouds by cold and rain"
There are various means Of combat
ing them. Once all sailors carried
black handled knives, which the mons
ter was believed to hold In special ab-
horrence When a spout made its ap-
pearance these knives were produced
and pointed in its direction, waved In
the air so as to make the sign of the
cross. or, according to the recommen-
dation of certain contemporary au-
thorities, driven several times into the
side of the ship. Certain passages from
the Gospel of st. John were recited as
charms against waterspouts. A loud
noise of any kind was also believed to
be efficacious against them; shouts, the
clash of swords, the beating of drums
and gongs, etc. The custom Of firing
cannon against waterspouts dates back
at least as far as the sixteenth GEN.
tury, as it is alluded to by Cameons In
the "Lusiad" G572). The original idea
appears to have been to frighten them
away by the noise Of the report, but In
later times 1t was believed that ne
watery column could be cut In twin
by the cannon ball and the spout thus
dissipated. 1t would be interesting to
know whether the cannonading OF
waterspouts is still sometimes practic-
ed. 1t was certainly common much
less than a century ago. 1t Is hardly
necessary to say that it is entirely fu-
tile.
Many misconceptions concerning
waterspouts are still widely prevalent
and these are kept alive by the loose
and inaccurate statements to be found
in many professedly authoritative
scientific works that touch upon TINS
subject. For example, one commonly
meets with the statement that the wa
terSpout Qike its terreStrlal conSeher'
the tornado) is precisely analogous TO
the widespread cyclone or low on
the one hand and TO the tiny whirl or
dust, dry leaves and the like over not
dry ground on the other. This state
ment is misleading. All three phe-
nomena are, to be sure, vortices In the
atmosphere and inequalities OF tenn
perature are their primary cause; but
| the immediate forces at work In pro-
ducing them are quite different. The
great cyclones of middle latitudes, l. e.,
systems of winds revolving around
centres of low barometric pressure and
extending over areas Of hundreds or
thousands of square miles, are cpl
sodes in the eastward whirls OF the
whole atmosphere around the poles or
| the earth and are evidently not due 10
excessive heating Of the ground De-
meath them, since they are more ire
Quent and more intense in winter than
| in summer. Just how they are produc-
ed and maintained Is one OF the great
moot questions of physics and meteor
ology. On the other hand, the little
whirls so often seen on a dusty road,
for example, result from an unstable
condition of the air Immediately over
the ground. On warm sunny day the
ground becomes intensely hot and
heats the lower layer Of air by conduc-
| ton. II the air as a whole is tranquil
| this layer may remain undisturbeo
for a time, constantly growing hotter
until at some particular point 1t sud
denly upsets-upward-i e., rushes up
| to it's natural level, in accordance with
| the law of gravity above the colder
and denser layer to which the ground
had not impaired its heat by conduc-
| ton.
At the surface of the ground the air
| flows in from all sides toward the
point where upward movement is In
progress; a point that may be compar-
| ed to the vent at the bottom of a wash
basin discharging its water. Local ESQ.,
called accidentally circumstances
prevent the infiowing air currents
from being exactly convergent and a
central whirl or vortex is the result.
In q cyclone the rotation Of the wind
M
| to left in the northern hemisphere and
vice versa in the southern because the
| lnfiowing currents are DETECTED in q
constant direction by the rotation OF
| the earth. In the dust Whirl the paths
of the air currents are so short that
| the defective effect of the earth'S ro-
tation is insignificant in comparison
with the local effects Of topography,
etc, and hence these whirls turn
sometimes to the right and some
times to the left in the same hemi-
sphere. From the foregoing para
graph it will be seen that the dust
whir and the cyclone are by no
means identical phenomena, differing
only in magnitude. What shall we
say of spout phenomena?
The latter term includes waterSpoutS
| landspouts and tornadoes. In French
| they are called trombes (from the
| Italian tromba, a trumpet, or the
| Spanish trombo, a top, in allusion TO
their visible form.) There is no es-
sential difference between the water
spout and the landspout; in both the
visible spout is a mass Of water va
por, the condensation Of which is due
to the expansion of moist air under
the diminished pressure within vor-
| tex in the atmosphere, but in the land
spout this vapor is mingled with dust
and other terrestrial objects sucked up
by the spout from the surface over
| which il passes.
The term tornado is applied specifi-
cally to the particular violent land
spouts that are common in certain
parts of the United States.
We have seen that dust whirls occur
only when the surface of the ground
is excessively heated, and during their
brief existence they are fed by the in
| flow of the lower air. The sharp con-
traStS of temperature that produce
them are characteristic of a land sur
| face as compared with a water sur
| face: yet it is over the latter that
spouts are most frequent. Here, then,
is one point of difference between the
dust whirl and the spout. Another is
the fact that no surface inflow of the
air is observed about a spout except
| Immediately within it. A waterspout
may pass within few hundred feet of
q vessel when the latter is absolutely
becalmed. Both of these circumstances
prove the inaccuracy of the common
statement that SpoutS are due TO an
II 4