228 EIGHTEENTH ANNUAL REPORT ON THE STATE CABINET. 



piles up and accumulates the elements of the incipient tempest : the light- 

 nings fly and the thunders roll ; the warm and cold air are mingled, the 

 temperature falls, and the rain, perhaps accompanied with hail, is poured 

 upon the earth. The velocity of the storm is from twenty to thirty miles an 

 hour ; and such a shower floods the country from west to eaot for many 

 hundreds of miles, till its force is spent on the Atlantic, unless the disturb- 

 ing elements fail at a shorter distance. 



One of the most extensive thunder-storms of the present century occur- 

 red on the evening of January 17, 1817, and was probably confined to the 

 Atlantic coast extending westward to the AUeganies. The wind had been 

 from the northeast, attended with rain, but with no indications of lightning. 

 At length changes in the wind occurred, and the following appearances 

 were recorded : 



At Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine, " in the earlier part of the 

 evening", say at 7 J p.m., rain and snow fell, with flashes of lightning. At 

 Boston, rain from the northeast. At Andover, Vermont, in the southeast 

 part of the State, after 10 p.m., snow and lightning with thunder con- 

 tinued to midnight. At Wilmington, thirty miles further south in Vermont, 

 snow fell rapidly, attended with brilliant lightning and heavy thunder, after 

 10 p.m. At Williams College, northwest part of Massachusetts, perhaps 

 forty miles west-southwest of the last-named place, rain from the northeast 

 had been falling till after 10 p.m., when there came one brilliant flash of 

 lightning with thunder that seemed to rock the mountains, followed by snow 

 and wind from the west ; and in Richmond, twenty miles farther south, the 

 phenomena were similar. At New-York, the northeast rain was changed to 

 storm from the west a little later. The storm extended southwards, crossed 

 Chesapeake bay near midnight, changing from rain to cold and snow from 

 the west ; so that a vessel on the Bay, by the freezing of the sails and cor- 

 dage, was rendered nearly unmanageable. The storm reached Savannah, 

 G-eorgia, at 2 a.m. of the 18th, where it was a heavy thunder-storm ( This 

 last account was rceived from an intelligent friend then at Savannah, on 

 his return to his New-England home). 



These facts show the rapid lateral motion of this storm ; or, in other 

 words, that the change from the west began on the eastern range of moun- 

 tains, and extended on a line of one thousand miles from north to south at 

 only a few hours difference in time. The accounts of such storms were then 

 few and imperfect ; and even this one, so full of interest when recalled at 

 this day, attracted attention chiefly to the fact, seen by so many on that 

 night in New-England, of the electric fluid passing off into the atmosphere 

 from the ends of sticks, branches of trees, masts of ships, heads of animals, 

 hats and hands of men, etc. ; a fact so long known as a meteor under the 

 name ^^Fire of St.Elmo^\ or ^^Castor and PoUux^\ A splendid instance of 

 this meteor is described by Professor Espy in his Fourth Meteorological 

 Report, 1857, p. 182. 



The extent of the great storms, which originate with an easterly wind, is 

 very various. In some, the change of direction of the wind begins near the 

 Bocky mountains ; and from that point the violent wind from the west first 

 shows itself, as in the storm of January 1, 1864 : in others, the change 



