412 TRANSACTIONS OF THE 



WEST INDIAN HURRICANES AND THE MARCH BLIZZARD OF 1888. 



From " Forest and Stream." 



On February 9, 1889, a most interesting lecture was delivered by Ensign 

 Everett Hayden, U. S. N., in charge of the Division of Marine Meteorology 

 of the U. S. Hydrographic Office, before the Seawanhaka Corinthian Yacht- 

 ing Club, the subject being "West Indian Hurricanes and the March Bliz- 

 zard." The lecture was very fully illustrated by a series of lantern slides 

 prepared from Mr. Hayden's diagrams and exhibited by Mr. William T. 

 Buckley, a member of the club. Through the kindness of Mr. Hayden 

 we are enabled to give the following abstract of his lecture, its length being 

 too great to allow its publication in full: 



As a lecture, to be delivered at a future time, will be devoted to the gen- 

 eral subject of winds and storms, a very much more comprehensive one 

 than that now under consideration, it is to be hoped that a somewhat 

 detailed description of the terrific tropical cyclones that devastate the 

 West Indies and advance upon our Gulf and Atlantic seaboard will be a 

 fitting introduction to a broad general outline of the meteorology of the 

 globe, to which the present lecture is merely preliminary. Moreover, it 

 was by the study of these very storms that an American, William B. Red- 

 field, won imperishable renown and the everlasting gratitude of mankind 

 by discoveries that have proved to be the very foundation stone of the great 

 science of meteorology as it is known and practically utilized to-day, at sea 

 and on land, in every ocean and continent of the globe to which the arts 

 and sciences of civilization have access. 



The first three slides, modifications of the familiar pilot charts of the 

 North Atlantic, will serve to make clear the general distribution of baro- 

 metric pressure and the circulation of the winds over the entire basin of 

 the North Atlantic and the adjacent continents during winter and summer, 

 together with the general paths followed by storms, and the regions where 

 they are most prevalent and persistent. Special attention is called to the 

 great persistent anti-cyclone, or area of high barometer, in mid-ocean to 

 the southwest of the Azores, about which the general atmospheric circula- 

 tion is in a direction with the hands of a watch, giving rise, below, to the 

 well known steady northeast trades, and above, or to the northward, to the 

 prevailing westerly winds along the transatlantic steamship routes — the 

 " brave west winds " of the north temperate zone. Another marked fea- 

 ture is the permanent area of low barometer about Iceland, a great sta- 

 tionary cyclone about which the circulation of the wind is against the 

 hands of a watch. To the southward, about the equator, lies what Maury 

 has called the meteorological equator, the region of equatorial rains and 

 calms at the meeting of the southeast and northeast trades, where the 

 warm, steady trade winds, laden with moisture from their long travel over 

 tropic seas, rise and precipitate their moisture, returning polewards as an 

 upper current, to descend again to the surface and be felt as cool, dry, anti- 

 cyclonic winds. The position of this great anti-cyclone in mid- Atlantic is 

 the key to the meteorology of half the civilized world; the diagrams indi- 

 cate its normal or average position, and illustrate how it follows that great 

 monarch of climate, the sun, in his changes of declination, moving north- 



