34 PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY. 



CHAPTER III. 



CLIMATE CONTINUED. 

 Moisture and Rainfall. 



Abundance of Moisture — The Rainy Season — Decrease Towards the West 

 — Vapor in the Atmosphere— Rain Charts and their Explanation — Excep- 

 tional Conditions of Rainfall in the Niobrara Region and its Cause — Compara- 

 tive Estimates with Europe. 



EASTERN Nebraska has an abundance of moisture. This may 

 appear like an exaggeration to those who were educated to be- 

 lievethat Nebraska was an arid region. And yet there is nothing in 

 the natural history of the State better established than that there is 

 here an abundance of rainfall. 



When the snows of winter disappear the ground is in good con- 

 dition to be worked. Sufficient showers come during early spring 

 to excite the crops of cereal grains, grasses and corn to an active 

 growth. Sometimes it is comparatively dry between the spring 

 showers and the June rains. These come sometimes earlier than 

 June — in the last of May, and sometimes not till the last of June 

 and constitute the rainy season for the State. It begins whenever 

 the " big rise" of the Missouri and the Platte occur. This rainy 

 season lasts from four to eight weeks. In fifteen years I have not 

 known it to fail. During its continuance it does not indeed rain 

 every day, except occasionally for a short period. Generally during 

 this period it rains from two to three times a week. It is more apt 

 to rain every night than every day. In fact during the whole of 

 this season three-fourths of the rain falls at night. It is not an 

 unusual occurrence for rain to fall every night for weeks, fol- 

 lowed by cloudless days. This rainy season of June occurs at a 

 period when crops most need rain, and owing to the regularity of 

 its occurrence, drouths sufficiently severe to destroy the crops in 

 eastern Nebraska, where there is proper cultivation, have not yet 

 been known. Even in 1874, when the drouth in some parts of the 

 State was damaging, there were some fields of corn that produced 



