XXXVIII. STORM STUDIES

RESIDENTS in Earth must take what comes and make the best of it, if they see no way to help themselves. As we have seen, there will sometimes be storms. Let one of these tell its own story:

You are always wrong in telling when storms begin. I began my work two days before you knew about me. If you think you know the worst about storms, you should see the way we work in upper air; but, however it looks, it is only a bit of rough play. The clouds get the worst of it, but they don't mind.

It was a thousand miles away that I began my work. Separate winds had been coming in from every quarter of the heavens, and all at once there was a great hush. We were like a great army waiting for orders. Cool winds, warm winds, dry winds, moist winds, and great reaches of air that had been still too long, began to try to find their places. There was some muttering of thunder, which showed that some clouds were answering by fire bolts; but in the main we were quite still.

All at once a tremendous sweep of air was set up and the circle grew wider and wider, till we were all taken into it. There was no time to ask, "Who began it?"

Clouds from the sea had all the moisture they could hold, and when a cold breath struck them they shook themselves free of it. It was so high in the air that the cloud tears froze as fast as they formed, and we had a pretty brisk hailstorm for a little while. All you could have seen were some thin patchy clouds three miles or more overhead. Sailors call them cat-tails, and landsmen mares' tails. The real name is cirrus, which is the same as curl or ringlet. The upper part of page 97 shows them, and you may often see them in the sky, especially a day or two before a storm. But I must return to my story.

I took my order to come down to the surface no matter what stood in my way, and a part of the time I must have traveled a hundred miles an hour. You could not have seen me if you had been looking skyward, which I doubt if you do often, you seem to have so much to occupy you, - till I struck a layer of

clouds, of which the lower air had no lack.

They were like those in the second section of the picture. Some people call them woolsack clouds; the

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Weather Bureau people use the word cumulus, which means piled together. In summer these clouds are very beautiful. Sunshine lights their upper surfaces, and in the afternoon near sunset they take on all the sun colors. Clouds look best from above if the sun is shining. Have you never heard people say that every cloud has its silver lining?

Well, as I said, those clouds were directly in my path, and I took all the woolliness out of them very quickly. The third section gives you an idea of the change I made. They spread out and covered the sky for a hundred miles in every direction. I dare say you saw them turn dark and deep blue, with a sort of fringe edge all about them, till finally they nearly covered the sky.

These steel-blue clouds are named nimbus, which means rainy.

The rest of the story you know better than I do. What became of me, do you ask?

Oh, nothing in particular. I am one of the children of the giants you read of in Lesson XXIII. We are of consequence only while we are at work, but every day's newspaper tells what some of us are doing to prevent worse disasters than those we sometimes cause.

XXXIX. A BLIZZARD

THE blizzard is, fortunately, not an everyday affair. In order to have one the upper air must be full of ice dust, sharp as powdered glass, and with it tiny frozen snow crystals rushing before a mighty wind.

Next it must happen that the temperature suddenly falls a great many degrees, so that it is unbearably cold. In the rush the snow and ice particles get pulverized, so that they are fine as flour. They make what is called white darkness, in which, while it is light, nothing can be seen.

Travelers caught in such a blast are in danger of death from three different causes: first, from suffocation, the air being too full of the powdered snow to breathe; second, from the dreadful cold; and third, from the shock to the brain of such an ice-laden hurricane.

One such blizzard, the worst that was ever known, began on the 11th of January, 1888, and raged for three days.

In a single day blue sky was darkness of the powdery snow.

replaced by the white

People had not time