Lindsay — Annual Rainfall and Temperature of U. S. 73 



tions of rainfall, including those interpolated, was 44. 

 The average of these 44, or the average for the whole 

 state, was 40.1 inches. If we multiply this 40.1 by the 

 number of square miles in the state and divide by 63,360 

 which is the number of inches in a mile, we have the num- 

 ber of cubic miles of water which fell in the state during 

 the year; that is, if t is the precipitation in inches and A 



the area of the state „^^^^ is the number of cubic miles 



of water. This for Missouri in the year 1896, just men- 

 tioned, was 43.9 cubic miles. The total number of cubic 

 miles of water falling in Missouri in the fourteen years 

 was 609,3, giving a mean of 43.5 cubic miles per year. 

 This is at the rate of 203,000 cubic feet per second as com- 

 pared with 195,800 cubic feet per second found by Profes- 

 sor Mpher between 1 877 and 1887. The maximum was in 

 1898, 60.9 cubic miles, 40% above the average; the mini- 

 mum was in 1901, 28.2 cubic miles, 35% below the average. 

 These two years, however, were very abnormal, the high- 

 est outside of 1898 being 49.1 cubic miles, and the lowest, 

 excepting 1901, 34.6 cubic miles. 



The 43.9 cubic miles which fell in Missouri in 1896 are 

 alone enough to make a layer over the whole city of St. 

 Louis (which has an area of 62^/4 square miles) 0.7 of a 

 mile deep. If it could all be utilized it would make a 

 river V2 mile wide, 16 feet deep, and 29,000 miles in 

 length. If this flowed at the rate of 3 miles per hour, it 

 would take over a year to pass a given point, so that 

 enough water falls in Missouri to fill and keep flowing 

 continuously a river of this crossection, and of the whole 

 length of the Mississippi, and then enough would be left 

 over each year to fill a canal of the same section from 

 New York to San Francisco. 



Professor Nipher showed in his paper before referred 

 to that the total rainfall in cubic miles falling upon the 

 State of Missouri during the ten years, was within two 

 per cent equal to the discharge of the Mississippi river 

 at St. Louis during that interval. 



