The Pleasantville press. (Pleasantville, N.J.) 1912-1929, 1924-03-08
EOUlNOCTlAL STORMS
ONLY. SUPERSTITION
u. S. Weather Bureau Saws
Belief Is Mythical.

Notwithstanding weather bureau
at Washington has just dispeIled sev-
eral common superstitions concerning
the weather. In both Europe and
America there is an old belief that a
severe storm-the s~o-called "equinoc-
tial storm" or .'equinoctial gale'-is
due about the date of either equinox.
that is. March 81 or September %. or
more particularly about the date of
the autumnal or yernal equinox, says
the New York Times.
1.-The fallaey of this idea consists in
identifying any storm that occurs
within a week or several weeks of the
equinox as the %equinoctial Storm"
says the bureau. statistics show that
there is no maximum of storm fire.
queney either in this country or in
Europe close to the date of either
equinox. OF course, in the long run
storms do occur about these dates,
just as they occur at all other times
In the year. No reason why storms
should be especially frequent around
the e~quinoxes is known to meteorolo-
gists.
I'm the United States the belief in
the ~equinoctial storm as an event Of
regular occurrence has perhaps been
fostered by the fact that West Indian
hurricanes are most common in the
late summer and early autumn.
Called EquinoctiaI Anyway.
ooopiapoI ~ "A nz-a,. cNa.-r, - Ii
character sweeps up our Atlantic sea
board, doing a great deal of damage
and attracting general attention. If
it happens anywhere near September
% the event is sure to be heralded as
the equinoctial storm"
Commenting on the moons influence
on the weather, the bureau says:
Modern science is unable to find
any evidence that the moon affects the
weather to an appreciate extent, and
unable to conceive of any reason why
it should. The movements of the at
mosphere that give US different kinds
of weather all involve the expenditure
of an immense amount of energy in
the form of heat. Such energy comes
to us from the sun and its varying eff
fects depend mainly upon the varying
positions of the earth as it revolves
around the sun and rotates on It's axis.
The moon has no heat of its own. 1t
merely gives off into space that which
1t receives from the sun, and a small
fraction of this reaches the earth. The
amount of heat we receive from the
0 o has been measured with very
delicate instruments. 1t is so excess
sively minute that whatever effect it
may have on our atmosphere must be
completely swamped and obliterated
by the enormously greater effects of
solar energy.
Dry and Wet Moon Myth.
at is true hat the pull of the moon
and the sun upon the atmosphere pro-
duces a tide in the atmosphere much
like a tide in the ocean. But this, too,
has been measured and it is found to
ornate expanding and shrinking of
he atmosphere due to heating by day
md cooling by night-the heat tide
o to speak. Hence it is of no prac-
ical interest.
1.-The belief in dry and wet moons,
Indicated by the position of the lunar
resent in the evening sky, and a
lost of other notions a~ssociating the
noon with the weather, are merely
die superstitions. Moonlight is some
ines said TO be conducive to frosts.
The fact is that moonlight nights also
re clear nights, and it is the absence
# clouds, not the presence of the
noon, that favors the occurrency of
rosts by permitting a rapid loss of
leat from the earth."s