66 
IOWA ACADEMY OF SCIENCES. 
Naturally, the trees on the south and west were, to some meas- 
ure, supported by those within, while those on the north and 
east, having no such support, succumbed to the sleet. A like 
effect may be noted in the case of trees in isolated localities, 
and in hedges. In hedges running east and west the greatest 
breakage was observable on the northern side— especially in 
the case of willow trees — whose leaning habit of growth made 
them particularly susceptible. In hedges running north and 
south the damage was not so great nor the effect so well 
marked, but here, as a rule, the greatest breakage was on the 
east. However, although these conditions were so general as 
to be readily observable, there were many apparently inexplic- 
able exceptions, but in the main the effects of the storm were 
as here given. 
/ 
THE AUGUST CLOUD-BURST IN DES MOINES 
COUNTY. 
BY MAURICE RICKER. 
It is my purpos to give merely a statement of facts con- 
cerning the storm which deluged Des Moines county the morn- 
ing of August 16, 1898. I believe it was the heaviest rainfall 
ever noted in the United States for the period of its duration, 
and while the area covered was not large, it proved to be very 
destructive. No doubt there have been storms in which the 
precipitation was as heavy, where no one saw fit to chronicle 
the event. Many great disasters, as the Johnstown flood, with 
a greater area and less precipitation, have become jiistoric, 
because of loss of life. 
My attention was called to the excessive rainfall that morn- 
ing at daylight by the little swollen creek which divides South 
from West Hills in the city of Burlington. Yet this was in 
the very edge of the storm. The newspapers contained many 
sensational stories of narrow escape from loss of lif€, damage 
to county, city, railroad and farming interests. I read these 
with no special interest and dismissed their estimates of six- 
teen to twenty inches of rain in Flint valley as exaggerations 
so commonly found in popular accounts of natural phencmena. 
As soon as the tracks were repaired I had occasion to niaRe 
