ACTION OF STORMS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 24 June 1942, Page 3

ACTION OF STORMS

MATERIALS FOR RAIN, SNOW & HAIL GATHERED UP IN AREA OF DISCHARGE. ACCORDING TO AMERICAN SCIENTIST. A storm, like a marauding army, lives off the country. St does not carry with it the rain, snow and hail with which it “blitzes” the territory it invades. Instead, it gathers them up—or the material with which to make them —from the immediate neighbourhood. Thus stated Dr. C. G. Abbot of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, after making studies of the watervapour content of the atmosphere fiom the surface of the earth to the upper limits of the gaseous shell which surrounds the earth. Explaining in a recent paper how atmospheric studies were carried on without sending kites, balloons, or aeroplanes aloft, Dr. Abbot said that water vapour in the earth’s atmosphere cuts out wide bands of spectrum among the sun’s infra red rays beyond the visible red rays. These regions of invisible spectrum are measured daily by the observers of the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory in North and South America, as they observe the sun’s variation, and its effect on weaSince these measurements show that there seldom is sufficient water in the air over any given area on the day preceding a storm to produce the amount that falls through precipitation, and since it is generally agreed by natural scientists that a storm does not carry its water with it, there is apparently one explanation left: A storm carries with it atmospheric distuibances which gather and concentrate water vapour to cause precipitation.