152 AGRICULTURE ON THE PACIFIC SLOPE 



enter the North American Coast from the West, mostly 

 in British Columbia or the state of Washington, and 

 move in a direction south of east. Sometimes they 

 move at the rate of six hundred or more miles a day, 

 and crossing the mountains and Great Plains, turn in 

 a northeast direction near the Great Lakes and reach 

 the northern Atlantic coast in from five days to a week 

 or more. Or, starting farther south, they may travel 

 southeast to the Cotton states. 



So the Eastern states get weather warnings several 

 days ahead by telegrams from the Weather Bureau 

 stations on the Pacific Coast. But the stations on 

 the Pacific Coast have very little warning of this sort 

 in regard to coming storms moving from the Pacific 

 Ocean. Other storms are known to start in the Gulf of 

 Mexico and move northeastward in the Atlantic states; 

 they are often of great violence, like that which partly 

 destroyed Galveston in September, 1900, and Key 

 West in October, 1909. 



The United States Weather Bureau sends warnings 

 of all coming storms as early as possible, and also noti- 

 fies communities of coming frosts and floods. Frost 

 warnings are of special importance to California farmers. 



Weather maps. The weather conditions in the 

 United States are each day shown on maps, which are 

 sent out by the Weather Bureau (figure 79), and we 

 ought to learn to understand these maps well, so as to 

 make use of them. 



