158 KANSAS CITY REVIEW OF SCIENCE. 



METEOROLOGY. 



A REMARKABLE SPELL OF WEATHER— JUNE qth TO i2TH, i88i. 



The storms of June 9th to 12th, 1881, were so severe and widespread through 

 the West that we have deemed it worth while to record them, merely as a matter 

 of history, leaving the meteorologists to work up the causes and the laws that 

 produced and directed them. — [Ed. 



THURSDAY, JUNE pTH. 



An unusually severe hail and wind storm occurred in the vicinity of Solomon 

 City, in Dickinson county, on the Kansas Division of the Union Pacific Railroad. 

 Hailstones fell in great quantities and of large size, some of them measuring ten 

 inches in circumference. The storm extended over a strip of fine farming coun- 

 try, about four miles wide aud six long, the direction being from the northwest to 

 the southeast in this district. A correspondent at Solomon City furnishes the 

 following account of the storm : "At about 4 o'clock in the afternoon the clouds 

 began to gather in the north and west, and to circle about and take on changing 

 positions rapidly. At half past 4 a small sharp point was seen to drop down 

 slowly three miles northwest of here till it struck the ground, and the column con- 

 tinued sinking till at the base in contact with the earth it measured something like 

 forty rods across, and widening gradually into a most magnificent inverted cone, 

 started slowly, moving to the north and east, and was watched with intense inter- 

 est from this point till it passed out of sight. At 6 o'clock the wind began to 

 change here in a most fitful manner, blowing a gale from every point of the com- 

 pas within the space of ten minutes. Then great chunks of ice began to fall with a 

 force that was more fearful than can be described, crushing through windows, cut- 

 ting the leaves and small branches from the trees and pounding the crops into the 

 ground. No one who witnessed ever saw or heard anything that equaled it. 



There were two or three different storm clouds of more or less power, some 

 of them moving in one direction and some in another, but the main one, the one 

 which claimed for its own everything within the scope of its size, took northeast- 

 erly for its general direction. The storm commenced at a point a few miles north 

 of Salina and from the first everything it touched was doomed. Moving on, some- 

 times with steady stride, it would cut a clean swath, and anon it would leap up 

 and forward and a space would be left entirely undamaged. Then again it would 

 strike the earth with redoubled fury, tearing up the very ground in its insatiate 

 greed of spoil. One gentleman lost a reaper and can find no trace of it ; another 

 had a new header taken off and not a vestige of it has been found up to this 

 time. Machinery of every description standing in the fields was broken and 

 twisted till worthless, and entire fields of grain were taken, leaving the ground as 



