Notes on the Cyclone of November 9fh, 
1886. 
(By C. MICHIE SMITH, Esq., B.Sc, F.R.A.S., F.R.S.E.) 
{Read 2nd Becemher 1886.) 
The cyclone which visited Madras on the 9th of November 
ought to be, and probably will be, studied in detail by some 
member of the Meteorological Department. But as we may 
probably have to wait for some years for the results of the 
investigation, it will not be out of place to give at once a 
summary of the main features of the storm, trusting to the 
only sources of information at present available — the reports 
published in the local papers, Mr. Pogson's note in the 
Gazette, the Daily Weather Reports, and private observations. 
The history of a cyclone ought to begin long before the 
cyclone has shown itself as such, for much of the interest in 
a cyclone is connected with its mode of formation. The con- 
ditions which are now recognized as those antecedent to 
cyclones may be briefly summarized as follows : — (1) A 
decrease in the baric gradients over the Bay and in Northern 
India, which tends to produce an approximate uniformity 
of pressure over the whole or a portion of the Bay area 
and of the adjacent coast districts ; ^ (2) the winds decrease 
in strength and the air motion in the coast districts and 
northern portions of the Bay is feeble, and variable in direc- 
tion ; (3) the conditions of temperature and humidity in the 
* See Eliot, Indian Meteorological Memoirs, Yol. II. Part IV., p. 427. 
