HUMIDITY IN A RECLAIMED DESERT 



47 



sea has contracted until, in its present form — Salton Sea — it is 

 40 miles long by 15 miles wide. At its lowest point the lake bed 

 is 287 feet below sea level. 



With the settlement of the valley by man and the development 

 and extension of the irrigation system, over 400,000 acres of the 

 floor of the basin have been brought into cultivation. This sud- 

 den transformation from a typical desert condition to one of ex- 

 treme fertility would have afforded a rare opportunity for some 

 interesting studies in climatology and meteorology had the work- 

 ers in these fields anticipated in time the revolutionary changes 

 for which the region was destined. So far as the writer knows, 

 unfortunately, no serious meteorological investigations had been 



TABLE 1 

 Average monthly humidity from May, 1916, to February, 1919, inclusive 



made in the Salton Basin previous to its settlement. The pres- 

 ent writer has conducted observations of temperature and hu- 

 midity during the period from March 1916 to the present date. 

 Also the State Experiment Farm at Meloland and the Water 

 Company at Calexico have at times made rather disconnected ob- 

 servations of a similar nature. It is to be deeply regretted that, 

 for comparative purposes, there are available no systematic data 

 relative to the conditions in the Imperial Valley previous to its 

 conversion from the desert state to the cultivated condition. 



The writer's meteorological data have been obtained purely 

 incidentally to his entomological investigations, and at the out- 

 set there was no thought of employing them as in the present 

 paper. In our contact, however, with people engaged in various 



