48 National Geographic Magazine. 



rate of about 600 miles a day, in the form of a great arched squall 

 whose front is more than a thousand miles in length, and which 

 is followed, far down the line, by northwesterly gales and tem- 

 peratures below the freezing point. 



The Night of the 11th-12th. 



Sunday afternoon, at 3 o'clock, the line of the storm center, or 

 trough, extended in a curved line, convex to the east, from Lake 

 Ontario down through New York State and Pennsylvania, along 

 about the middle of Chesapeake Bay to Norfolk, across North 

 Carolina to Point Lookout, and thence down through eastern 

 Florida to Key West. Northeasterly, easterly, and southeasterly 

 gales were therefore felt all along the coast from the Gulf of St. 

 Lawrence to the Florida Keys, excejJt in the bight between Look- 

 out and Caiiaveral, where the barometer had already reached and 

 passed its lowest point and the wind was northwest, with much 

 cooler weather. Reference to the Barometer Diagram shows 

 pretty clearly that the trough passed Norfolk a short time before 

 it reached Hatteras, where the lowest reading was undoubtedly 

 lower, the evening of the 11th, than it was at Norfolk. 



By 10 P. M. the line has advanced as far east as the 74th 

 meridian. Telegraphic reports are soon all in from signal stations 

 along the coast. The barometer is rising at Hatteras and Nor- 

 folk and still falling at Atlantic City, New York, and Block 

 Island, but there is little or no indication of the fury of the storm 

 off shore along the '74th meridian, from the 30th to the 40th 

 parallel, where the cold northwesterly gale is sweeping over the 

 great warm ocean current, carrying air at a temperature below the 

 freezing point over water above 75° Fahrenheit, and where the 

 barometer is falling more and more rapidly, the gale becoming a 

 storm, and the storm a hurricane. Nor are there any indications 

 that the area of high barometer about Newfoundland is slowing 

 down, blocking the advance of the rapidly increasing storm, and' 

 about to hold the center of the line in check to the westward of 

 Nantucket for days, which seem like weeks, while a terrific north- 

 west gale plays havoc along the coast from Montauk Point to 

 Hatteras, and until the right flank of the line has swung around 

 to the eastward far enough to cut off the supply of warm moist 

 air pouring in from the southeast. Long before midnight the 

 welcome " good night " message has flashed along the wires to all 

 the signal stations from the Atlantic to the Pacific slope, whilst 



