CYCLONES AND TORNADOES.
Science as yet has not been able to grasp the laws that governcyclones. They seem to be the result of some intensely electriccondition of the elements, which finds an expression in that form.Cyclones, until within a few years, meant those circular tempestsencountered in the Pacific and Indian oceans. They are the mostdestructive of all storms, being far more deadly than monsoons andtornadoes.
All navigators, when caught in a cyclone know how to get out of it.They have only to sail at right angles to the wind, when they willeither pass beyond the outer rim of the circular sweep, or reach thecenter, where the ocean is calm.
The diameters of the ocean cyclones range from fifty to five hundred ora thousand miles. Professor Douglas, of Ann Arbor University,entertains his friends now and then by manufacturing miniaturecyclones. He first suspends a large copper plate by silken cords. Theplate is heavily charged with electricity, which hangs below in abag-like mass. He uses arsenious acid gas, which gives the electricitya greenish tint. That mass of electricity becomes a perfect littlecyclone. It is funnel-shaped and spins around like a top. When hemoves the plate over a table, his cyclone catches up pennies, pens,pith balls and other small articles, and scatters them in everydirection.
Cyclones never touch the equator, though the ocean ones are rareoutside the torrid one. They are caused by the meeting of contrarycurrents of winds, and are known under the names of hurricanes,typhoons, whirlwinds or tornadoes. Those terrifying outbursts whichnow and then cause so much destruction in our own country seem to bethe concentration of the prodigious force of an immense ocean cyclonewithin a small space, which renders them resistless.
A writer in the _N. Y. Herald_ gives some interesting facts regardingthese scourges of the air. While the cyclone, as we have shown, mayhave a diameter of hundreds of miles, the track of a tornado is oftenlimited to a few hundred feet, and rarely has the width of half a mile.
The cyclone carries with it a velocity of as much as 100 to 140 milesan hour. It sends a certain amount of warning ahead of its track, andthe acceleration of the wind's speed at any given point, is gradual.
The tornado falls almost without notice, or rather the indications areoften so similar to those of an ordinary thunderstorm that only askilled and careful observer can detect the difference.
The phenomena and effects of cyclones in the West Indies have long beensubjects of study and observation. As the center approaches a ship sheis assaulted by wind of a terrible force and a sea that is almostindescribable. The water no longer runs in waves of regular onwardmotion, but leaps up in pyramids and peaks. The wind swirls andstrikes until wherever there is a chance for vibration or flutter, evenin tightly furled sails, the fabric soon gives way. I once saw a briggo drifting past us in a West Indies cyclone with everything furled andclosely lashed with sea gaskets. We were in company nearly at theheight of the storm, when the center was only a few miles away. Therewas a spot in the bunt of the foretopsail where the sail was nottightly stowed, and for several hours it had doubtless been flutteringunder tremendous pressure. As I watched her a little white puff wentout of the bunt of the topsail, and then the destruction of the sailwas rapid. Long ribbons of canvas went slithering off as if a hugefile had rasped the yard arm, and in a short time there was nothingleft on the yard except the bolt ropes and the reef tackles. We coulddo nothing to help the crew, for it was doubtful whether we could keepoff the reefs ourselves, and the brig passed out of sight to hercertain doom.
The local tornado that so frequently plays havoc with property and lifein the West is, like the cyclone, a revolving force, but it carrieswith it a variety of phenomena wholly distinct from those thataccompany the larger storm. Many of the effects of one tornado arewholly absent in others, and the indications that in one case have beenfollowed by a terrible disaster are not infrequently found at othertimes to presage merely a heavy thunder shower.
The freaks of a tornado are wholly unaccountable. In some cases not anobject in its track will fail to feel its power for long distances; inother instances it will seem to act like a cannon-ball that plows upthe earth on striking, then rises and strikes again, leaving the spacebetween untouched. Sometimes it will go through a forest leveling thetrees as though a gang of axemen had plied their tools on lines laidout by surveyors, nothing outside the track being touched; but again insimilar windfalls there will be found occasional pockets scored in theforest growth jutting off the right line, like small lagoons openinginto a flowing stream. These seem to have been caused by a sort ofattendant whirlwind--a baby offspring from the main monster, which,having sprung away from the chief disturbance, scoops a hole in thewoods and then expires or rejoins the original movement.
I have seen one of the most violent and, so to speak, compressed ofthese storms, cut a road through thick woods so that at a distance theedges stood out clear and sharp against the sky as would those of arailway cutting through earth. Trees standing at the edge of the trackhad their branches clean swept one side while on the other there was noperceptible disturbance of the foliage.
Sometimes the tornado acts like an enormous scoop, catching up everymovable thing and sweeping it miles away: and again it becomes adepositor, as if, tired of carrying so much dead weight, it dumped itupon the earth preparatory to grabbing up a new cargo. These effectsare particularly noticeable in the tornado that goes by jumps. When itstrikes and absorbs a mass of debris it seems to spring up again like aprojectile that grazes the surface. For a space there will be a veryhigh wind and some damage, but no such disaster as the tornado haspreviously wrought. Out of the clouds will come occasional heavymissiles and deluges of water. Then down goes the tornado againcrashing and scattering by its own force and adding to its destructivepower by a battery of timbers and other objects brought along from theprevious impact. Relieved of these masses, it again gathers upmiscellaneous movables and repeats its previous operation.
The force with which these objects strike is best seen when they falloutside of the tornado's path, since the work done by the missile isnot then disturbed by the general destructive force of the storm.Thus, near Racine, Wis., I have known an ordinary fence rail, slightlysharpened on one end, to be driven against a young tree like a spearand pierce it several feet. The velocity of the rail must have beensomething enormous, or otherwise the rail would have glanced from sucha round and elastic object.
Many of the settlers in the tornado districts of Southern Minnesota,Iowa, Kansas, and Nebraska excavate a deep cellar beneath their housesand cover it with heavy timbers as a place of refuge for their familieswhen a tornado threatens to strike them. While these dugouts areusually effective, they are not always so. There have been instanceswhere families having only time to descend and not time enough to closethe trap door have been exposed to the storm's full fury by the tornadogetting into the opening and lifting off the whole roof after havingfirst swept away the house above. Another pathetic case resulted inthe death of a whole family by an extraordinary freak of the tornado.The storm first struck a large pond and swept up all the water in it.Its next plunge deposited this water on one of these dugouts, and thefamily were drowned like chipmunks in a hole.
Some of the western tornadoes are accompanied by electricalmanifestations to an extent that has originated a belief in electricityas their cause. These disturbances are very marked in some cases,while in others they have not been noticed. In one tornado in CentralIllinois electricity played very peculiar antics not only in thetornado's track, but also at some distance from it. In the ruinedhouses all the iron work was found to have been strongly magnetized, sothat pokers, flatirons and other metal objects were found adhering toeach other. Just off the tornado's track the same effects werenoticed, and several persons experienced sharp electric shocks duringthe passage of the storm. Afterward it was found that the magneticinfluence was so strong that clocks and watches were stopped andrendered wholly useless.
The scooping action of the tornado somet
imes makes considerable changesin the topography of the country, as when it gathers up the water of alarge pond or water course and makes a new pond or opens a new channel.At Wallingford the water in a pond of very large size was taken bodilyfrom its bed, carried up a hill and dropped nearly in one mass, so thatgullies and ravines were cut in every direction.
There is a divide in Northeastern Illinois between streams flowing intoLake Michigan and those running to the Mississippi. So level is aportion of the land on the summit, and so slight the elevation abovethe lake, that in wet seasons the surface-water seems almost as willingto go one way as the other; and on one occasion the upper streams ofthe Desplaines River were nearly permanently diverted toward the lakeby a tornado that gathered up the water and scored the surface in itstrack toward the east.
Many are the stories told of the way in which objects are carried awayby the wind and left in strange places. In one Illinois tornado twochildren and an infant were caught up. The dead bodies of the childrenwere found only a few hundred feet distant, but the infant was pickedup alive more than a mile away from the spot where the tornado sweptthe children up. An accordion that must have come a long distance--forit was never claimed--was found so entangled in the branches of a treethat it was alternately pulled apart and pressed together by the wind,thus creating such weird and uncanny music during a whole night that analready sufficiently scared settlement of negroes were kept in a stateof frantic dismay until daylight revealed the cause.
In another case a farmer who followed the tornado's track in search ofmissing cattle was astonished to discover one of his cows lodged abouttwenty feet above the ground in the branches of a half-stripped maple.
"I allers knew that was an active heifer," he remarked, as he came insight of her hanging over the slanting limb, "but I never allowed shecould climb a tree."
The Jungle Fugitives: A Tale of Life and Adventure in India Page 29
