REPORT OF AN ADDRESS ON RAIN STORMS. 



DELIVERED BEFORE THE ASSOCIATION, MAT, 1845, BT 



ELIAS LOOMIS, A. M. 



PROFESSOR OF MATHEMATICS AND PHYSICAL SCIENCE IN THE UNIVERSITY OF NEW-TOEE. 

 HONORARY CONSULTING METEOROLOGIST OF THE ASSOCIATION. 



Professor Loom is called the attention of the Association to the recent progress of Meteor- 

 ology, and particularly to some remarkable phenomena of two storms which occurred in Februaiy, 

 1842. Both of these stonns were of great extent. The first, which occurred about the fourth of 

 the month, was remarkable for the amount of rain and an elevated temperature ; the other, which 

 occurred about the sixteenth, was remarkable for the strength of the wind and the fall of the 

 barometer. On the morning of Februaiy 3, rain was falling over an area extending uninterupt- 

 edly from the Gulf of Mexico, on the South, to a great distance beyond the St. Lawrence, on the 

 North ; and from beyond the Mississippi, on the West, to an unknown distance in the Atlantic 

 ocean. On the afternoon of the fourth, a most destructive tornado was experienced in the northern 

 part of Ohio, being almost exactly in the centre of the general storm. On the second and third of 

 February, the centre of the storm was nearly stationaiy. On the fourth and fifth it traveled North, 

 sixty-two degrees East, at the rate of sixty-two miles per hour. The storm of Febraary 16, traveled 

 in a direction North, fifty-three degrees East, at the rate of twenty-three miles per hour. In both of 

 those storms, the wind, after it became violent and there was a considerable fall of the barometer, 

 manifested a tendency to revolve about a centre, with a motion spirally inward. 



Professor Loom is remarked upon the importance of numerous and well concerted observations 

 spread all over the United States ; and upon the imperfection of the observations made at the 

 Academies in the State of New- York. The Academies are not furnished with barometers, and the 

 observations of the wind are very loose and unsatisfactory. He showed the inadequacy of such 

 observations for the purpose of investigating the phenomena of storms, and hoped that the Associa- 

 tion would use its influence to induce the Board of Regents to re-organise the system upon a scale 



more in accordance with the claims of science. 



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