Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 17.djvu/146

 The Winter in Europe.—The earlier part of the winter of 1879-'80, while it was exceptionally mild in America, was distinguished in Europe for its severity. In France it is spoken of as the coldest winter which has been recorded for more than a century. It appears that the temperature of October was a little below the usual mean. November gave twelve days of frost; and December surpassed everything that had been known in Paris, in the intensity and duration of the cold. From the 26th of November to the 28th of December, that is, during thirty-three consecutive days, there was frost every day, and during fourteen days of the period, from the 14th to the 28th of December, the thermometer did not rise above the freezing-point. The beginning of December was tempestuous. The storm-center, coming up from the ocean on the morning of the 3d, passed Paris between the 4th and 5th, accompanied by a rapid depression of the barometer and a perceptible rise of temperature from about 18°. The storm, having caused great damage in France, then went to the east, and gradually diminished in intensity as it passed over Germany. About ten inches of snow fell during this storm, and four inches more on the 8th, after which it cleared off, and the extraordinary cold began. The mean temperature of December in Paris is 38°; the temperature of December, 1879, was 18·3°. The lowest mean temperatures previously recorded in the present century were in 1812 (30·2°), 1829 (25·7°), and 1840 (27·9°). The nearest approach to the temperature of the last December was probably in December, 1788, but the uncertainty of the observations taken at that period makes an exact comparison impracticable. The temperature on the 10th (-14°) was the lowest ever observed. The cold, at the period of its greatest intensity, on the 9th and 10th, presented a remarkable distribution over the surface of Europe. On the first day, two centers of cold were manifested, one being toward Poland, where the thermometer sunk to -32°, the other in the French departments east of Paris. On the second day, the former center had increased in surface but diminished in intensity, while the second center had extended and had reached Paris, and the cold had increased over nearly the whole of France. The temperature continued high on the borders of the British Channel and the ocean, so that great contrasts were presented in places not very far from each other according as they were near to or removed from the sea. Vegetation suffered from the duration of the cold, so that most of the exotics in the public gardens were killed or greatly injured. A zone of high pressure was established in all the west of Europe after the storm of the beginning of the month, the center of which oscillated from France to Poland and from Austria to Denmark. It was observed that the low temperature was special to the inferior regions of the atmosphere. At the height of a little over a thousand yards the air was much more mild. During the latter part of the month the thermometer on the Puy-de-Dôme was often thirty to forty degrees higher than at Clermont, and on the Pic du Midi it rose every day after the 19th to above the freezing-point, while it was still always below it at Paris. The cold terminated suddenly on the 28th, with a storm from the North Sea; a thaw followed, with destructive floods. A new cold term set in after the 4th of January, with a region of high pressure in the center of Europe. The summits again showed a higher temperature than the base of the mountains. The region of extreme cold was this time, however, in Russia.

M. Marié Davy, Director of the Observatory of Montsouris, remarks, in a communication to the Société Française d'Hygiène, that this has been the sixth severe winter of the century; and the six have recurred with remarkable regularity in periods of two each, viz.: 1788-'89 and 1794-'95, interval six years; 1829-'30 and 1837-38, interval eight years; 1871-'72 and 1879'80, interval eight years. These periods were each removed to a medium distance of about forty-two years from each other. The near equality of the periods of recurrence is probably a simple coincidence, but it is nevertheless curious. M. Faye has published an account of the meteorological observations, which have been made to the month of May, 1879, at the observatory of the French missionaries in China, at Zi-kawei. From them the director of the observatory draws the conclusions—1. That storms and tempests, and in general all barometric depressions, are propagated in