66 IOWA ACADEMY UF SCIENCES. 



Naturally, the trees ou the south and west were, to some meas- 

 ure, supported by those within, while those on the north and 

 east, having no such support, succumbed to the sleet. A like 

 effect may be noted in the case of trees in isolated localities, 

 and in hedges. In hedges running east and west the greatest 

 breakage was observable on the northern side— especially in 

 the case of willow trees — whose leaning habit of growth made 

 them particularly susceptible. In hedges running north and 

 south the damage was not so great nor the effect so well 

 marked, but here, as a rule, the greatest breakage was on the 

 east. However, although these conditions were so general as 

 to be readily observable, there were many apparently iaexplic- 

 able exceptions, but in the main the effects of the storm were 

 as here given. 



THE AUGUST CLOUD-BURST IN DES MOINES 

 COUNTY. 



BY MAURICE RICKER. 



It is my purpos to give merely a statement of facts con- 

 cerning the storm which deluged Des Moines county the morn- 

 ing of August 16, 1898. I believe it was the heaviest rainfall 

 ever noted in the United States for the period of its duration, 

 and while the area covered was not large, it proved to be very 

 destructive. No doubt there have been storms in which the 

 precipitation was as heavy, where no one saw fit to chronicle 

 the event. Many great disasters, as the Johnstown flood, witl- 

 a greater area and less precipitation, have become historic 

 because of loss of life. 



My attention was called to the excessive rainfall that morn- 

 ing at daylight by the little swollen creek which divides South 

 from West Hills in the city of Burlington. Yet this was in 

 'the very edge of the storm. The newspapers contained many 

 sensational stories of narrow escape from loss of life, damage 

 to county, city, railroad and farming interests. I read these 

 with no special interest and dismissed their estimates of six- 

 teen to twenty inches of rain in Flint valley as exaggerations 

 so commonly found in popular accounts of natural phenomena. 

 As soon as the tracks were repaired I had occasion to make 



