50 JOURNAL OF THE WASHINGTON ACADEMY OF SCIENCES VOL. 13, No. 4 
tionally good one. Among the Alleghenies, to be specific, where the 
prevailing trend of the ridges is from northeast to southwest, this 
roaring is most persistent and pronounced with strong southeast 
winds. But these are the winds of the forward, or rainy, side of a 
cyclone whose center happens, as is often the case, to be 300 miles, or 
less, west to northwest of the place in question; hence the strong 
probability that the roaring of these mountains will soon be followed 
by bad weather. In these storms, averaging, roughly, two a month 
during summer and twice as many during winter, a number of distinct 
meteorological phenomena, including the roaring just mentioned, 
are often observed, the more conspicuous and more important of 
which it will be interesting, perhaps, to describe and profitable to 
explain. 
The particular region here referred to, and in which the phenomena 
under discussion frequently occur, is the Gap Mills valley of Monroe 
' County, West Virginia, between Peters Mountain, one of the finest 
of the Alleghenies, to the southeast, and Gap Mountain to the north- 
Fig. 1. Cross section of Peters Mountain and adjacent region 
west. A cross section of this region, not, however, at the highest 
part of Peters Mountain, approximately to scale—23 miles from crest 
to crest—is given in fig. 1. Some four miles beyond the crest of the 
larger mountain, to the southeast, is that of another mountain nearly 
as high, namely, 3800 feet, roughly, above sea-level and 1200 feet 
above the adjacent valleys. Beyond this in turn are still a few other 
ranges, mostly smaller, however, and more irregular. <A typical 
view of the Gap Mills valley in which the roaring of the mountain and 
associated phenomena are so pronounced, and of Peters Mountain 
that does the roaring and causes most of the other phenomena to be 
discussed, is shown in fig 2. The Gap Mountain is off the picture 
to the right. The ridge in the middle background, known as Jesse’s 
Ridge, and averaging about 200 feet in height, often is the cause of 
interesting secondary phenomena. 
DESCRIPTIONS AND EXPLANATIONS 
Although the murmur of the forest, the roar of the mountain, the 
winds that cause these sounds, and the usually accompanying clouds 
