Tornado at St. Cloudy Minnesota — Hall. 159 



weighing five tons was moved six feet and turned partly around. 

 Some houses were turned on their foundations; others were neatly 

 unroofed, and still others escaped with holes punched into them. 

 A block of hardwood was found with a pine stick driven into it as 

 an iron spike; a pine lath was found driven inches into the body 

 of a tree. Chickens were literally stripped of their feathers, and 

 barn doves were dashed to the ground, flattened as if a heavy stone 

 had crushed them. 



To many, and particularly to Mr. Campbell, this storm 

 seemed evidently enough to be an electric body. It had not all the 

 phenomena of a current, for it had distinct lateral limits. Outside 

 its given track it left no traces save those made by flying timbers. 

 Yet with the atmospheric conditions peculiar to a cyclonic area, 

 the rash of the wind and the clearly defined limits of the spirally 

 moving column, these same phenomena would be left. 



When we have the details of the disaster, and look for its 

 causes, we shall see as Professor Payne has pointed out,* that it 

 was only the culmination of a series of causes extending over the 

 preceding ten days. At this time, the winds which had been 

 blowing since morning up the Mississippi valley, were warm and 

 slight: at La Crosse, Saint Paul, Moorhead and Yincent, the teai- 

 perature was 70 degrees Fahr. and above, really a summer's 

 warmth; while at Duluth, and along the south shore of Lake Su- 

 perior, the thermometer stood at 38 degrees Fahr., with the wind 

 moving steadily towards the southwest. When this cold 

 wind from the lake region had spread itself over a considerable 

 area of the warm, stifling air of the Mississippi valley instead of 

 becoming mixed with it, in the economy of nature a terrific move- 

 ment must result. Thg relative positions of these two currents of 

 air, the warm and the colJ, were as unnatural as if a lake of oil 

 were held down by au invisible film beneath an equal area of 

 heavier water; when once this film should be puncUired, the oil 

 would seek its true place at the top of the water with irresistible 

 energy. 



The local conditions are never the same in any two tornadoes. 

 These conditions, — the contour of the surface, the altitude of the 

 contact zone of air, the direction of the winds, the humidity 

 of the air, — all tend to modify to a marked degree the 



*Mouthly Weather Keview, April 188G, p. 113. 



