TORNADOES. 213 
current. The water will play about the obstacle if it is unable to carry it along with 
its force. And so with a hill in a terrific storm of wind and rain. Clouds as well 
as other things will be swept along with the current and where there are clouds 
there will be moisture, and the more clouds the more moisture, for clouds are noth- 
ing more nor less than suspended moisture, and the denser they become by the 
powerful squeezing process of the winds, the more apt are they to deposit that 
moisture and that moisture itself to be carried along as a river in the air. 
Another party in discussing this tornado of the 18th of April, repeats the old 
idea about the cause being the meeting of two waves of air at different tempera- 
tures. Notwithstanding the firm belief in this idea, I pronounce it as ridiculous as 
the absurd notion that the moon affects and causes changes in the weather of our 
globe, and assert that a more false scientific idea never existed.—And more, I 
challenge proof in support of either this idea or that the moon has the least pos- 
sible effect upon our weather system. What gave rise to this idea was evidently 
the condition of the air at the center of the area of low-barometer. Here such 
‘currents must necessarily meet, as cold and warm water might meet in a valley 
where one stream came from some boiling spring and the other from the melting 
of ice and snow on the mountain top, but the meeting of these warm and cold cur- 
rents of air or water would not be the cause of any destruction that they might 
cause on their passage thither. The cause of the destruction would rather be 
owing to the rapidity with which they rushed to meet each other in this common 
center, on the steepness of the hill whereby the force of gravity is accelerated, 
or the rapid displacement of air by the power of heat at the center of the area of 
low-barometer. 
Then there are people who somehow or other believe that ‘‘ electricity” is 
and must some way be the cause of these severe storms, and indeed they go so far 
as to hold that some are electrical and that others are not, but are due to some 
other cause—but what, they do not know. Now the presence of electricity in 
these storms is purely accidental. The hotter it is the more heat will be taken up 
with the water that forms the clouds, so the more heat taken thus up into the air, 
the more electricity will there be in the air to generate the flash and light we call 
Lightning and the noise we call thunder; which are, as I will repeat, merely auxil- 
lary to the storm and not even essential to it, much less being the cause of it. 
In all the comments in the papers thus far I have not seen the slightest allu- 
sion to the real and simple cause of this storm of the 18th of April, and the only 
cause of all storms of whatever nature and local peculiarities and wherever they 
may occur, whether at the equator or at the poles, or in Asia, Africa, Europe or 
America. 
| According to the daily weather map, published by the U. S. Signal office at 
Washington, at half-past seven on the morning of the 18th of April, 1880, the 
area of low barometer centered at about Omaha, Nebraska, nearly due north of 
the place where the storm of the afternoon of the 18th is noted as first starting. 
