Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 67.djvu/513

Rh other January periods. Electric storms, very high tides and seismic shakes are among the probable phenomena at this time. A regular Vulcan storm period covers the 6th to the 12th, being central with moon's last quarter on the 9th. This period lies near the center of the Venus period on the 12th. As we enter this period the weather will again moderate; winds will shift to southerly and easterly; the barometer will fall in western extremes, and general storms will organize and pass in regular order from west to east from about the 8th to the 12th. The first stages of these storms will most likely prove moderate and rainy, but as the high barometer pushes into the low areas from the northwest, look for high winter gales, blizzards of blockading snow and sleet and a severe, dangerous, cold wave. If the barometer is very low in the far south at this time, the cold wave will not stop short of the Gulf Coast. Watch your barometer as far south as Florida. If it is very low, keep your eye on any 'high' that may head that way from the northwest." In other words, the cold wave depends upon the relative distribution of air pressure, and it will be cold or warm, clear or rain or snow, according to the prevailing atmospheric conditions. And how are we to know these all-important prevailing atmospheric conditions without the reports of the U. S. Weather Bureau? How can you watch your barometer as far south as Florida, and keep your eye on any 'high' that may head that way from the northwest without these telegraphic reports? Neither Venus nor moon nor Vulcan has yet vouchsafed to send them by the wireless system.

I will not follow the month's forecast in detail further, but I challenge the reader to go through the whole two columns, and arrive at any conclusion in the predetermination of the weather for any day in any particular locality. Is it the same whether you are on the Pacific coast, in the Rocky Mountain region, the upper or lower Mississippi Valley or in the New England states?—the oracle and the prophet sayeth not.

Summarized, the prediction would read about as follows: Wind and rain turning to gales and blizzards the 2nd, 3rd and 4th (a day sooner or later); followed immediately by extremely cold weather (dates and regions not given); moderating weather, winds shifting to southerly and easterly, general storms organizing and passing in regular order from west to east, the 6th to the 12th; look for high winter gales, blizzards, blockading snow and sleet, and a severe, dangerous, cold wave (date and place uncertain); moderation of the cold and return of cloudiness and more rain and snow, the 14th, 15th and 16th; prolonged disturbed and threatening weather the 17th; rising temperature and winter storms, 18th to the 23rd; winter thunder and lightning the 19th; snow and blizzards, the 20th to the 23rd; cold relaxing, cloudiness gathering in the west and more rain and snow passing eastward,