METEOEOLOGY: 303 



way northwardly. At the last of the month salmon and sturgeon 

 began to ascend the river in considerable numbers. 



May. — The average readings of the barometer and thermometer 

 did not vary much from those of the four preceding Mays. The pro- 

 longation of the wet season to the last of the month somewhat com- 

 pensated for the deficiency of the semestral fall of rain, which was 

 reduced down to 6.263 inches. On the evenings of the 6th, 8th, and 

 9th sheet lightning in the northern horizon revealed the time of 

 occurrence of terrific hail storms at various points at these respective 

 dates. Tiiat which occurred at Butte creek^ Shasta county, was 

 accompanied by a gale, the belt of which was not over half a mile in 

 width, and the extent of ground on which the largest sized hail fell 

 two miles. These hailstones were about the size of carbine balls, of 

 a nucleus of ice surrounded by snow, apparently. On the 21st snow 

 fell lower down on the foot hills than at any previous time during the 

 winter. The temperature of the river still remained 4 degrees lower 

 than that of well water, the current running at the rate of four miles 

 an hour. 



June. — Throughout the whole month the weather was very variable. 

 Instead of the close, sultry atmosphere that usually obtains as the 

 sun enters the calm belt of Cancer, strong, chilly winds, varying from 

 SSW. to WNW., just at the period of the summer solstice, pre- 

 vailed, freighted with moisture from the ocean. As the land, how- 

 ever, had already attained a high degree of temperature, of course it 

 could not condense the vapors of water held by the air ; consequently 

 no rain fell after the 1st, when 0.033 inch are now chronicled as the 

 last for this extraordinary season. The total amount, therefore, of 

 rain for the season of 1855-'56, at Sacramento, was minus the average 

 4.264 inches The river continued to fall steadily. Its temperature 

 on the 2l8t was 4 degrees higher than that of well water 12 feet 

 below the surface, which fact showed that the great bulk of the 

 melted snow from the mountains had passed off. 



July. — Notwithstanding the cloudless sky which characterized 

 nearly this whole month, the tempering of the atmosphere by fresh 

 southerly breezes was more obvious to one's feelings than by the ther- 

 mometer, the mean of which was only 0.60 minus the average of the 

 three preceding Julys. During the few days that northwardly winds 

 predominated the heat became intense. An important meteorological 

 fact connected with this unpleasant wind is that all the moisture has 

 been wrung out of it that a dew-point of zero in the cold latitudes 

 could extract. It is, indeed, a return wind, which, after blowing over 

 the surface fresh from the ocean, grows colder as it goes north, where 

 the process of condensation commences, and when it comes back it is 

 as parching and obnoxious to animal and vegetable life as the simoon 

 of the eastern deserts. The river reached a very low stage this month, 

 and its temperature at 12 feet below the surface read 75*^;, while well 

 water at the same depth was 66^. 



August. — This last of the summer months closed after a remark- 

 ably cool summer . The whole number of days of extreme heat, in which 

 the thermometer reached 90° and upward, amounted to only 11 for 

 the summer, viz : two in June, six in July, and three in August. On 



