THE WEATHER VS. THE NEWSPAPERS. 



389 



known as the 'sirocco front' (shaded on the chart), while at the same time the 

 cold northerly and westerly winds, blowing south in the rear, carry down the 

 isotherms and mark the extent of the cold wave that follows. Hence around 

 and about an intense early winter cyclone we may have warm, moist rains on 

 the southeast, cool rains, turning to snow, on the east and northeast, with bliz- 

 zard conditions on the northwestern flank and clear, cold weather on the extreme 

 southwestern, as was the case in this instance. In consequence of this, the possi- 

 ble contrasts through the center of the average early winter cyclone are such 

 as to jump any locality over which it passes from summer (60° to 70°) tempera- 

 tures to winter (40° to 20°) in a few hours, and it is the passage of a typical 

 cyclone over any given locality that gives the violent changes peculiar to 

 American weather. Wholly independent of its own circulation of winds about its 



Fig. 2. 



center, the cyclone moves forward in the circumpolar drift at the rate of from 

 fifteen to thirty-five miles and more an hour. If it passes north of a place, the 

 locality is affected by its southeasterly, southerly and southwesterly to westerly 

 winds and the weather that belongs to these quadrants. If it moves along a line 

 south of any given place, the locality is affected by its easterly and northeasterly 

 to northerly and northwesterly winds, which make up the coldest and stormiest 

 side of the cyclone. As the barometer at its center is always low, the cyclone is 

 called a 'low area,' or 'low,' for short, and as such appears in Weather Bureau 

 reports. Storm intensity in a cyclone is in due relation to the minima of its 

 own barometric pressures and to the maxima of the anti- cyclone nearest it. All 

 forecasting is based on an effort to balance the probable paths that the cyclones 

 and anti-cyclones will take with respect to the regions east of their point of origin. 



