Evening star., 1926-01-10
Thunder Weather Predictions Made
By Able Gabriel, French Statistician

/ triple domain of heat. rain and et-
mospheric electrIcity2 Ny- first sue
/ cess in foretellIns. at long distance.
/ the great dryness Of 1921 and tho
| great rains Of 1922, made me lean
| toward this hypothesis.
| In a memOra ndum presented 70
! the Academy Of Sciences in 1922,
/ declared that, being then in mini
mum period of storm activity, We
/ must wait until 1927. the return Of
| the normal average Of thundeTstornls
! and an aSgravation Of electrical man
/ ifestations''
In another memorandum 70 the
Academy Of Sciences. in 1928. tia-
briel predicted for 1925. particularly
in the region of Paris. the number
of storm days will he much fewer
than the average Of 26 per year" He
got il right. both for the Paris region
and all Normandy. Up to the end Of
November. there had been only 16
days Of storm in 1925.
So. now, Paris can expect, in 1"2S-
1927. not only the nineteen hundred
and freeze to death" which = pretty
generally believed in, but egHa lE the
abbe's prediction. made in later
part Of 1925 that. along with the
| freeze To death" an explosion of
celestial fireworks and torrenual rains
will make l926-1927 a year 10 remem-
| Der,
/ And. as the cause is astronomic,
affecting the whole earth. America can
| look forward to about the same thing.
| There must he something in ii, as
the Academy of Science gives rather
strong publicity TO the whole affair.
! 1t opens its discussions to thunder
and-lig htning along with the communi-
cation of the electrician NattiaS.
| Lightning in flashes of traditional
! zigzag form is the most familiar
manifestation of the phenomenon; hut
it is we'll established that lightning
also appears in the shape of either
a globe or-occasionally-a disk.
Such globes and disks have been
seen by numerous observers. who re-
port that they turn rapidly upon
themselves and end by disappearing
suddenly or bursting with 4 loud
| noise.
The causes Of this peculiar variety
! of lightning are being studied not
only by members of the French Acad-
emy Of Science, but in other countries.
The electrician Matthias claims that
| ball lightning is made up of a new
substance. of properties still mystic
| riouS in their nature. but appare entlv
| liquid in its form. NJ. Mattias has
given it the tentative name of full
minating matter" BY this hypoth-
| esis. an explanation IS to hand Of
| the fact that the incandescent globe
! sometimes is eXtinguished and some
times is scattered by explosion.
| Assuming the Illuminating matter"
| to be homogeneous (that is, Of like
consistency throughout, then cooling
will be most rapid at the exterior. A
sort of outside crust would thus be
formed. If the globe be large. an ex-
plosion should result. If it he small.
gradual extinction is more probable
NJ. Matthias does not attempt TO say
what becomes of the illuminating
matter" when ball lightning disap-
pears. The assumption is its absorp-
ton into the atmosphere in the form
| of gas.
! He explains the very curious
! streamers which sometimes cling 10
ball lightning. The balls may not
/ always have a spherical shape, this
coming rather from cooling and
| shrinking Of the mass. Should there
be cooler and hotter portions. the
cooler ones would not merge IN the
/ sphere, but form such "streamerS''-
whose cause in the past no electrician
could imagine