TWENTY- SECOND ANNUAL MEETING. 



41 



its unusual character the chance of accidental verification is small, and therefore 

 a fulfillment would be the more striking and convincing. To give an account of the 

 actual weather as contrasted with this prediction is an undertaking for which there 

 is here no space. But for descriptions of the unprecedented rains, the disastrous 

 floods, the extraordinary cloud-bursts, destructive washouts, bursting reservoirs and 

 broken dams, of which the Johnstown calamity was the culmination but not the end, 

 the reader has only to refer to the newspaper files from April to August, and to read the 

 overflowing pages of the Monthhj Weather Revieivs for the same period. The reports 

 of drouth, which in other years have generally occupied three columns of the Weather 

 Review for the spring and summer months, have been diminished to a few para- 

 graphs; and in midsummer (July) the only reports of drouth published are from the 

 arid regions of Utah, Montana, and Nevada. 



8. No reports of these predicted heavy August and September rains have been 

 found. 



9. Fully verified. 



10. For Northern States not verified; for Southern States the crop is so unim- 

 portant that the crop bulletin of the Agricultural Department does not report it, 

 but the prediction is quite safe, and has no doubt been fulfilled. 



11. Verified; but the remarks appended to the discussion of No. 4 are in a measure 

 applicable to this. 



12. The actual prices have been placed for comparison in the above table with 

 the predicted prices. No further comment is necessary. 



13. The estimated corn crop made by the September Crop Report is 91 per cent. 



14. The following table contains the predicted and the actual precipitation in 

 Kansas from May to August, inclusive: 



For December, 1889: The average precipitation was to be one inch and eighty-one 

 hundredths (1.81) for Kansas; the records of the Kansas Weather Service observers 

 show an average for the State of about fonr-hundredths (.04) of an inch. The aver- 

 age temperature for the State for December was to be 14°. The above-mentioned 

 records put it above 40°; all reports stating that it has been the warmest and dryest 

 December for the State on their records. The Government Bulletin says: "The 

 month of December has been unusually warm in all districts east of the Rocky 

 Mountains, while the normal temperature prevailed on the California Coast, and it 

 has been slightly cooler than usual on the North Pacific Coast." 



— The preceding comparisons of the predicted with the actual weather are suffi- 

 cient for the purpose. What conclusion has been forced upon the reader? what 

 are we to say about them as a whole? — for it is as a whole that they must stand or 

 fall. Although desirous of finding and ready to welcome a real advance in predict- 



