METEOROLOGY. 



471 



CLOUD-BIRSTS. 



Communicated by William J. Young, of Boise City, Idaho Territory. 



You are probably aware tliat in the Great Basin, between the Rocky and 

 Sierra Nevada range of mountains, but little rain falls during the summer 

 montlis. I wis!) to call attention to a singular phenomenon that is observed in 

 that region during the dry season. 



An old mountaineer and prospecter told me that one night in the summer of 

 1862, he, with several others, camped in a canon near Black Rock. Some time 

 during the night he was awakened by a roaring as of a storm in the mountains ; 

 yet the night was clear — no cloud was in sight. But soon the water came rush- 

 ing in torrents down the caiion, and drove the party to higher ground. He said 

 such floods were not uncommon in that region, and were occasioned by water- 

 spouts. 



J. II. Neale, esq., a very intelligent merchant, who has spent the last two 

 years in that region, says : 



"In August, 1864, I was travelling from Humboldt mines to Reese river. 

 The whole countr}^ was dry and parched, as is usual at that season of the year, 

 and the weather was ev^en warmer than common. About 2 o'clock p. m. I saw 

 what appeared to be a whirlwind. It appeared to be about 25 miles distant, 

 and the spiral column extended from the earth to a very dense cloud, which was 

 nearly as high as the scattered mountains in that vicinity. Soon this column 

 seemed to break, the upper third of it being detached from the rest and bent 

 over to the eastward. I then perceived that tliis spiral column was not of dust, 

 as I had at first supposed, but was water. The next day I crossed a canon 

 leading from the place where the phenomenon had occurred. Water was still 

 running in it, and there was evidence of a recent flood." 



Inquiring I'urther, I consulted the Hon. William R. Harrison, a gentleman of 

 scientific attainments who had spent several years in the Humboldt mountains. 

 He told me that such phenomena were of not unfrequent occurrence in the Hum- 

 boldt mountains, and were called " cloud-bursts." He had witnessed several of 

 them — had ojice been in the edge of one, and once had stood on the top of a 

 mountain and witnessed the terrific scene in the caiion beneatli him. He says : 



" The first sign of them is the sudden gathering of a small, dense, black 

 cloud on the mountain side, about one-third of the way from the top, and gen- 

 erally at the liead of a canon. Soon this cloud seems to dash itself to the earth, 

 taking a circular motion. It appeared as if an inverted whirlwind was drawing 

 from the cloud immense quantities of water, which is dashed in floods against 

 the mountain side." 



By these Hoods, he said, he had known trees uprooted, and rocks, tons in 

 weight, carried by the torrent the eighth of a mile. On one occasion the water 

 in the canon leading from the " cloud-burst" was 30 feet deep. The area that 

 receives this immense body of water from the cloud is not generally more than 

 one hundred yards in diameter, and sometimes is much less. Star City (Iliun- 

 boldt mines) was once damaged by such a flood. I have heard (on this my 

 inhn-mation is not direct) that in 1862 several persons lost their lives by one of 

 these " cloud-bursts," somewhere in the Washoe region. These storms are 

 entirely different from anything I ever heard of occurring in any other part of 

 the world. They occur where the sky is elsewhere clear and cloudless. From 

 the first gathering of the cloud until the storm has passed and the sky is again 

 cloudless is seldom more than an hour, and does not generally exceed forty 

 minutes. 



The cause of these phenomena may be familiar to scientific men, but to the 

 uninitiated it is a mystery how such quantities of water can be so suddenly col- 

 lected from the buriung air of these desei't plains. 



