Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 32.djvu/676

656 With the gloomy, close, and muggy weather, some people are troubled with rheumatic pains and neuralgia, old wounds and corns are painful, animals and birds are restless, and drains and ditches give out an offensive smell.

A glance at the diagram will show that the barometer falls during the whole of the front of the cyclone. Therefore the explanation of the universally known fact that the barometer generally falls for bad weather is, that both rain and wind are usually associated with the front of a cyclone. When we discuss secondaries, we shall find a kind of rain for which the barometer does not fall; and in our chapter on forecasting for solitary observers we shall explain why it sometimes rains while the barometer is rising, and why there is sometimes fine weather while the mercury is falling.

Now, to take prognostics which belong to different portions of the cyclone-front. By reference to Fig. 2 it will be seen that in the outskirts of the cyclone-front there is a narrow ring of halo-forming sky. Hence the sayings: "Halos predict a storm (rain and wind, or snow and wind) at no great distance, and the open side of the halo tells the quarter from which it may be expected." "Mock suns predict a more remote and less certain change of weather."

Inside the halo sky comes the denser cloud which gives the pale watery sun and moon. Still nearer the center we find rain, first in the form of drizzle, then as driving rain. In the left front we find ill-defined showers and a dirty sky.

We have now come to the trough of the cyclone. The line of the trough is often associated with a squall or heavy shower, commonly known as "a clearing shower." This is much more marked in the portion of the trough which lies to the south of the cyclone's center than on the northern side.

Then we enter the rear of the cyclone. The whole of the rear is characterized by a cool, dry air, with a brisk, exhilarating feel, and a bright sky, with hard cumulus cloud. These features are the exact converse of those we found in the cyclone-front. In the cloud-forms especially we see this difference. All over the front, whether high up or low down, whether as delicate cirrus or heavy gloom, the clouds are of a stratified type. Even under the rain, when we get a peep through a break in the clouds, we find them lying like a more or less thick sheet over the earth. All over the rear, on the contrary, clouds take the rocky form known as cumulus; cirrus is almost unknown in the rear of a cyclone-center in the temperate zone.

In the exhilarating quality of the air we find the meaning of the proverb, "Do business with men when the wind is in the northwest. A northwest wind belongs to the rear of a cyclone, and improves men's tempers, as opposed to the neuralgic and rheumatic sensations in front of a cyclone, which make them cross.

As to the details of the different portions of the rear. Immediately