Evening star., 1941-01-18
Of Stars, Men
And Atoms
Notebook of Science Progress
In Laboratory. Field
And Study
By Thomas r. Henry.

By Thomas r. Henry.
A 10-year drought is in its last days.
If the weather of North America fol-
lows its usual pattern there should now
| be at least a decade of moderately wet
years.
Final rainfall records for 1910 have
lust been analyzed by the United States
Weather Bureau. They show that dur
ing the II months the United States as
a whole received 303 inches of preclpl-
tation. The normal amount is 29 lnches.
1t was quite irregularly distributed
but that is the fashion of droughts when
they are breaking. Louisiana, for exam
pie, was deluged with 74.6 inches, or l34
per cent of normal. Mississippi received
60 inches, or ia per cent OF normal. on
the other hand, Nebraska had the fifth
driest and Illinois the fourth driest year
in half a century.
The drieSt State was Nevada with an
average of 100 inches but this was
nearly a fourth better than normal.
Wyoming, the second driest State, re-
ceived l44, slightly above normal. Cali.
fornia had the wettest year since 1909
and the third wettest in its history, Ne
vada the second Wettest since 1914 and
Idaho the wettest since 1927 and the
third wetteSt it ever has known.
A succession of wet years, says DR..
j. B. Kincer, chief of the climatology
section of the Weather Bureau, is
hope rather than promise. There are
undoubted rainfall cycles in North
American weather, he points out, but
they never can be depended upon to run
true to form.
However, his charts show previous dry
periods have not lasted more than a
decade and have ended, as this one seems
to be ending, in spottedly prolific rain
fall over most of the country. He
points out that there will doubtless be
local droushts, but the likelihood of dry
years for two-thirds of the continent
is remote. The last great drought was
from 1886 to 1895 and it was followed by
more than 80 years when the rainfall for
the country as a whole was at least
normal.
The economic effects of the great
drought OF the '30s, Weather Bureau
statistics show. have been incalculable.
Figures on crop losses have not yet been
compiled Mr. Kincer's figures reveal
one of the great migrations in history,
the reverse of the covered wagon mi
grafton" westward, with nearly BOG 900
people abandoning their farms in the
tier of Great Plains States, which were
hardest hit.
North Dakota lost Al ,155 of its people,
South Dakota 5l,715, Nebraska 64495,
Kansas 1882 and Oklahoma 66232.
Most of these people, the records show,
had moved to these States during the
preceding wet decade. They were drawn
by high wheat prices and the fair gam
BILE of good crops on dry land, Nearly
every other State in the Union gained in
population during the 10 dry years.
There is no way, Mr.. Kincer says, for
the Weather Bureau to predict drought
until it is under way. There is no
gradual approach. A normally wet year
will be succeeded, without any warning,
by an abnormally dry one. The condi-
ton tends to grow worse for a time,
although there may be years of close to
normal rainfall interspersed. Then the
precipitation improves until the normal
for the country as a whole is re-estab-
lished
All that can be said with reasonable
certainty, he points out, is that there
will be other prolonged droughts-per-
haps in one decade or perhaps in two or
three-and that there is nothing any,
body can do about it. If the spread of
it is bound to end in the same sort of
disaster
The past year. Mr.. Kincers revised
statistics show fell we'll within the warm
era through which the continent seems
to be passing. While temperatures were
moderate through most of the East, some
parts of the West had the warmest sum-
mer on record, with high temperature
of 124 degrees officially recorded in Cali
fornia's Death Valley.
Generally it was fair crop wear.
Abnormally early frosts hit the South,
however, and did extensive damage
everywhere north of the Everglades.
HailstormS caused great destruction of
wheat in Oklahoma, Iowa and Montana,
The trend of the figures, Mr.. Kincer
says, shows no promise as yet of a re-
turn to the winters of two or three gen.
eratlons ago when the snow and killing
frost line was far to the southwark.