Kansas Academy of Science. ' 55 



SOME COMMON FALLACIES ABOUT KANSAS 

 WEATHER. 



S. D. Flora. 



KANSAS apparently leads all other interior states in the 

 number of reports of adverse weather conditions and 

 spectacular storms that have emanated from it. Being pre- 

 eminently an agricultural state, its prosperity from year to 

 year has depended upon its weather, and there seems to have 

 been an unfortunate tendency from the beginning of its history 

 to give undue publicity to the unfavorable features. We seldom 

 hear about the unpleasant or damaging weather in other states 

 whose climate is widely advertised, but the terms, "droughty 

 Kansas" and "Kansas cyclone" have almost become a part of 

 our spoken language. Even yet, a great many persons who are 

 not familiar with the conditions have difficulty in reconciling 

 the numerous reports of droughts and storms with the fact 

 that the state ranks so high in per capita wealth and general 

 prosperity. 



The average annual precipitation of Kansas, which includes 

 the moisture from rain and melted sleet and snow, ranges from 

 forty-four inches in the southeastern county to a little more 

 than fifteen inches along the Colorado line. Over the eastern 

 half it equals that of Iowa, Wisconsin and Michigan, and is 

 only a little less than that of Illinois, Indiana or Ohio, and it 

 occurs at a more opportune time of the year than the precipita- 

 tion of any of these states. From 71 to 78 percent of the an- 

 nual amount for the entire state occurs in the six crop-growing 

 months, April to September, inclusive, and there is no state 

 in the country, except a few along the South Atlantic and Gulf 

 coasts that, taken as a whole, receives as much rain during the 

 summer months as the eastern third of Kansas. Even the 

 middle third of the state receives slightly over twenty inches 

 during these six months, which is within two inches of the 

 amount that falls during the same period in Illinois, Indiana, 

 Ohio, New York and the New England states, while the 

 western third, the "semiarid region," has an average precipi- 

 tation of more than sixteen inches for this period, which 

 almost equals the amount during these six months in Michigan 



