Evening star., 1940-03-24
-The pointing at the left wos done
expressly TO illustrate hi. ohicIe by
the renowned world traveller and ortist

the renowned world traveller and ostist
Rockwell Kent
Typhoons originate at sea off the Philippines. have
lived through three of them in the Far East The first
one was while was collecting at the village OF Capan.
in the Philippines. We saved only by congregatng
in an ancient Spanish fort The village was swept from
the earth as though it had never existed The second
typhoon of my experience nearly wrecked the O.oo'
Abatross off the coast of Formosa the third MT us as
we were crossing the Yellow Sea- It is terrifying
experience with such torrentia downpous of rain that
vctable walls of water to shut OFT all sight ana
sound except their own appalling roar and crash.
Cyclones inhabit the Arabian Sea and the Bay OF
Bengal in Australia the inappropriately named willy
willy" is cyclonic storm But the tornado is made -
and does its damage the United States plains par
tcuarly in the Mississippi BASIN Like huge knife, it
cuts its swath through the land. ceavng buildings In
two and sometimes splitting trees sharply down the
middle An average of fifty year reported but as
many as 14O have occurred in single year. with death
toll of 794 and property damage of $47OOO,OOO.
Floods: Of all Natures tantrums, these catastrophes
take the most lives and destroy the most property In
1881, flew in an airplane from Peking to Nanklng,
China over the areas flooded by the Yellow River For
hundreds upon hundreds of miles it like flying over
vast lake. dotted here and there with islands, which
the tops of hills. Groups of people huddled on the
tiny dry spots waiting to die. As our pilot swooped
down, they would look up at in dumb supplication,
but with no real hope of In that food more
than million people died in a few months from
drowning disease starvation. No country on earth
suffers so much from floods China. Every year they
come, bringing destruction to some part OF the land
But along the Rhine and the Danube, the Volga and
the Euphrates; along our own Colorado and the
maraudng Mississippi indeed wherever there arc rivers,
floods take their terrible toll In the Mississippi flood of
1927 the most destructive in its history parts of seven
states under water Eight hundred thousand people
were driven from their homes. Property loss was bill
lion dollars. In its wake fever smallpox and all
the other dread diseases that follow flood
BIiz1ord.: We have recently passed through the
season for this type of storm Fewof who live away
from the northern Great Palms. the real home of the
blizzard in this country realize the fury of that mad
rushing combination of snow and wind. Neither man
nor beast face it. Snow finds its way through every
crack and crevce of house, barns and haystacks are
literally covered by drifting snow.
The worst billiards of all occur on the Antarctic
Continent. Sir Douglas Mawson recorded one storm
that lasted from March 10 through May with the wind
blowing ninetyseven miles hour for long periods
and gusts reaching nearly 200 miles an hour.
In our eastern states such storms extremely rare
That is partly why the famous blizzard OF 1888
created such havoc in unprepared New York, New
Jersey, Pennsylvania and southern New England.
Forty inches of snow fell while bowling, freezing gale
of wind reached eghty-four miles an hour. and the
temperature fell to zero Drifts piled thirty feet high.
Communication of all kinds cut off. -Four hundred
people were dead at the end of the fourday storm, and
the property loss was twenty million dollars.
lightning: In summer. this phenomenon is Mother
Natures favorite weapon of wrath. single flash may
do millions of dollars worth of damage. The greatest
damage done in forested when valuable timber
goes up in flames The proportion of fires started by
lightning is much greater in the National Forests of
California and Oregon than in the more tckly settled
regions of the country. though thunderstorms are four
or five times less frequent there than east OF the
Rocky Mountains.
Hail: This comes with thunderstorms as well as
lightning In fact you never have true hail except in