Page:The National geographic magazine, volume 1.djvu/64

 rate of about 600 miles a day, in the form of a great arched squall whose front is more than a thousand miles in length, and which is followed, far down the line, by northwesterly gales and temperatures below the freezing point.

Sunday afternoon, at 3 o'clock, the line of the storm center, or trough, extended in a curved line, convex to the east, from Lake Ontario down through New York State and Pennsylvania, along about the middle of Chesapeake Bay to Norfolk, across North Carolina to Point Lookout, and thence down through eastern Florida to Key West. Northeasterly, easterly, and southeasterly gales were therefore felt all along the coast from the Gulf of St. Lawrence to the Florida Keys, except in the bight between Lookout and Cañaveral, where the barometer had already reached and passed its lowest point and the wind was northwest, with much cooler weather. Reference to the Barometer Diagram shows pretty clearly that the trough passed Norfolk a short time before it reached Hatteras, where the lowest reading was undoubtedly lower, the evening of the 11th, than it was at Norfolk.

By 10 the line has advanced as far east as the 74th meridian. Telegraphic reports are soon all in from signal stations along the coast. The barometer is rising at Hatteras and Norfolk and still falling at Atlantic City, New York, and Block Island, but there is little or no indication of the fury of the storm off shore along the 74th meridian, from the 30th to the 40th parallel, where the cold northwesterly gale is sweeping over the great warm ocean current, carrying air at a temperature below the freezing point over water above 75° Fahrenheit, and where the barometer is falling more and more rapidly, the gale becoming a storm, and the storm a hurricane. Nor are there any indications that the area of high barometer about Newfoundland is slowing down, blocking the advance of the rapidly increasing storm, and about to hold the center of the line in check to the westward of Nantucket for days, which seem like weeks, while a terrific northwest gale plays havoc along the coast from Montauk Point to Hatteras, and until the right flank of the line has swung around to the eastward far enough to cut off the supply of warm moist air pouring in from the southeast. Long before midnight the welcome "good night" message has flashed along the wires to all the signal stations from the Atlantic to the Pacific slope, whilst