48 ELEMENTS OF GENERAL SCIENCE 



called a blizzard. It frequently happens that people who are 

 caught in a blizzard are unable to find their way home and are 

 frozen to death. Almost every winter great numbers of cattle 

 and other live stock perish in the blizzards known as northers. 

 48. Hurricanes. Hurricanes are storms of the same general 

 character as the cyclones, but they originate only over the 

 oceans. Those which affect the United States have their 



FIG. 29. An unusually large " high " area 



Note the low temperatures throughout the country. United States weather map 

 for January 12, 1914 



origin near the West Indies. They usually move westward 

 toward the coast of the southern United States and then grad- 

 ually curve northward and northeastward and pass out across 

 the Atlantic Ocean with decreasing severity. It is very com- 

 mon for them to pass almost parallel to our eastern coast and 

 to do a great deal of damage to shipping. Occasionally one 

 of them goes far enough west to enter the Gulf of Mexico. In 

 the year 1900 the city of Galveston was almost destroyed by 

 a hurricane which had taken this unusual course (fig. 30). 



