1.00 P. M. 2.30 P. M. Meteorological Luncheon at Hart House. Symposium. Improvements in synoptic weather charts, especially on the reduction of atmospheric pressure observations. C. The history of barometry in the United States. (Illustrated) LeRoy Meisinger, U. S. Weather Bureau, Washington, D. C. 30 min. Upper air pressure maps as possible aids in the solution of the barometry problem. (Illustrated) C. LeRoy Meisinger. 30 min. Sea-level vs. the Megadyne Base. Alexander McAdie, Harvard University, Blue Hill Observatory, Readville, Mass. 10 min. Major wind streams vs. high and low pressure centers as the basis for weather forecasting. W. G. Reed, Philadelphia. 5 min. Cloud movements as aids in forecasting. C. F. Brooks, Clark University, Worcester. 10 min. Thursday, December 29 9.30 A. M. Meeting of Council. 10.00 A. M. Annual Meeting. Introductory remarks by the President. Appointment of tellers for ballots. Closing of polls. Secretary's report. Treasurer's report. Appointment of auditing committee. Results of the balloting. Amendments to By-Laws. Discussion of the Society's program and policies. Resolutions. 11.30 A. M. Presidential Address. Tendencies and progress in climatology during the past decade. Professor R. DeC. Ward, Harvard University. 2.00 P. M. Closing Session. Military meteorology. W. G. Reed, Philadelphia. 30 min. Comments on a proposed revision of the international definitions of cloud forms. H. H. Clayton and others. 15 min. How fast can a droplet grow by falling in a cloud? W. J. Humphreys. 10 min. A typical mountain cloud; what shall we call it? W. J. Humphreys. 10 min. The opening addresses and that of the retiring president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science will be given Tuesday evening, Dec. 27. On Wednesday afternoon, from 4 to 6, there will be a reception at the Royal Ontario Museum. On Thursday afternoon, at 4, Sir Adam Beck, Chairman of the Hydro-Electric Commission of Ontario, will deliver an address on Hydro-Electric Development in Canada, illustrated with motion pictures. On Thursday evening there will be a reception to visiting scientists in Hart House. One of the main attractions of the meeting will be an exhibition of scientific apparatus and products held under the auspices of the Association. Arrangements for entering exhibits are to be made by direct correspondence with Prof. F. E. Burton, University of Toronto. Meetings of Other Societies The American Physical Society will meet from Dec. 27-31, in the lecture room of the Physical Laboratory of the University of Toronto. The Ecological Society of America will also hold its meeting at this time, Dec. 27-30, at the University of Toronto. The National Council of Geography Teachers will hold its meeting in Washington, D. C., this year, on the afternoon and evening of Dec. 28, at the home of the National Geographic Society. The Association of American Geographers will meet immediately after the National Council, on Dec. 29-31, at the National Geographic Society Building, in Washington, D. C. ICE STORM AT WORCESTER, MASS., NOV. 26-29, 1921 Even the "oldest inhabitant" admits the ice storm of Nov. 26-29 was the worst that has been known in this section. The ice and sleet which collected on Thanksgiving day were practically gone when the storm started. Friday was brilliantly clear till late afternoon, and Saturday morning the sky was covered with a thick, snowy, alto-stratus cloud. Snow began to fall at 2 p. m. and continued heavily until 4.45 p. m., when it changed to rain. The temperature of wet surfaces remained below freezing and the rain froze, forming a crust on the snow. Sunday it rained till afternoon, when sleet and moderate rail fell intermittently. The temperature fell to 25°F. in the evening. About 10 p. m. it started to rain steadily. By Monday morning the ice which had formed on the trees was nearly an inch thick on exposed branches and many of the upper ones had broken off and fallen to the ground. The rain continued all day Monday with the rising north-northeast wind, and the temperature just below freezing. By 5 p. m. it was dangerous to walk along the street so many limbs and wires were falling. A wild night followed. Sleet rattled and rain pattered and the ice laden trees creaked continuously. With the passage of each roaring gust, down crashed great branches from trees. The low clouds were intermittently lighted by vivid green flashes from trolley wheels. At daylight a thunderstorm with pink flashes of lightning awakened the people to a scene of sad destruction. Pelting rain and sleet continued to drive by at high speed. The heavy rain which fell Mondoy night did not freeze as much as that which fell previously, except where the wind was uninterrupted, as the lowest temperature was 28. This water combined with a new fall of 11⁄2 inches of sleet and the previous ice, covered thoroughfares with 5 inches of slush and water. The thunderstorm on Tuesday morning announced the approach of the end. By Tuesday noon there was hardly a tree that had not lost at least one good sized branch. Ice on exposed ordinary insulated electric wires about 4-inch in diameter was more than 2 inches thick, and weighed upwards of 1.3 pounds per foot. It was computed that ice on the side of any dense, unbroken evergreen tree 50 feet high and on the average 20 feet wide would have weighed 5 tons. Large crews were kept busy keeping the main thoroughfares cleared of the debris. Telephones, electric lights, telegraphs-everything was out of order. Whole lines of telephone and trolley poles were snapped at the base, crippling both services. For days trolleys did not run in many places and trains were hours late as the crews had to stop to remove poles from the tracks. Schools 1A piece of ice 9.5 inches long, which had fallen from an electric wire on the south side of Coes Pond, was picked up on the morning of Dec. 11. It weighed exactly 1 pound. The ice was 1.8 to 2.0 inches thick and 2.3 to 2.6 inches wide. were closed and mail service was badly interrupted. Several people were injured by falling branches and ice, and a number of horses were killed. The damage in Worcester was estimated at several hundred thousand dol lars. The total precipitation which fell in the 751⁄2 hours of the storm was 4.05 inches as collected in the rain gage on the roof of the main building, Clark University. Of this, 0.28 was melted snow, and about 1.65 melted sleet. On the following day, bright sunshine soon relieved unbroken branches of some of their load of ice, though not without first inflicting further damage to some trees by expanding the ice on overweighted limbs. The unusual duration of this ice storm seems to have been due to a large supply of cold air flowing southwards, and of warm air going northwards above it. The cold wind at the surface, as is usual when sleet or ice storms occur,2 formed a barrier over which the warm wind had to rise. It was this rising and the consequent cooling by expansion which reduced the vapor capacity of the wind aloft and thus produced rainfall. The two currents in this case were surprisingly well balanced. The temperature of the lower one did not rise enough above freezing to prevent the continued formation of ice, while the wind above, after the first fall of snow, remained continuously so much above freezing that all the precipitation from it was in the form of rain. It was interesting to note that the conditions which gave the big ice storm here also caused very severe ice storms in Oregon and Washington on November 20 and 21, said to be the worst since 1916, and destroyed thousands of orchard trees. Another account of this storm will probably appear in the Monthly Weather Review at a later date.-G. F. Howe and C. F. Brooks. JULIUS von HANN The passing of Julius von Hann on October 1, 1921, marks the end of a life that was devoted almost exclusively to the study and exposition of Meteorology and Climatology. Hann was born on March 23, 1839 and after receiving his education at the University of Vienna, became a school teacher. At the age of twenty-nine, his natural love for meteorology led him to enter the Central-Anstalt für Meteorologie in Vienna; six years later, in 1874 he became director and held that office until 1897 when at the age of fiftyeight he retired. His retirement was only from official duties; from nieteorology he could not retire and did not retire until the very presence of death made further work impossible. The first fruits of his relief from official duties was his "Lehrbuch der Meteorologie" which was written between the autumn of 1898 and August 1900 in the Physicalische Institut in Graz. This book, which was so different from any previous text-book of Meteorology, became at once the recognized standard book of reference and from 1900 onwards practically no major piece of meteorological work has 2 Detailed accounts of the meteorological conditions accompanying the Occurrence of sleet and the formation of glaze "Annals of the Astr. Obs. of Harvard Coll.," Vol. 73, Pt. 1, 1914, and "Monthly were published in the Weather Review" for February, 1920. Inquiries for copies of these papers may be addressed to the Secretary, Am. Met'l. Soc. been published which does not draw upon the Lehrbuch for facts and data. His other great work, "Handbuch der Klimatologie" was written while he was still director of the Central-Anstalt. This book with its masterly descriptions of climatic conditions all over the world is regarded by authorities as the standard work upon this subject. These books are Hann's largest individual works but his extensive contributions to the Meteorologische Zeitschrift of which he was the editor or joint-editor from 1866 to 1920 are voluminous and cannot be passed by unnoticed. Hann received many honors, national and international and without doubt was the leading meteorologist and climatologist of the age and by his death a "long life, a full life, and a life for which every meteorologist has cause to be grateful" was brought to a close.-Abstract from Meteorological Magazine, November, 1921, pp 300-302. NEED FOR METEOROLOGY On page 662 of the American Review of Reviews for December appears an article on “Engineering and Legal Aspects of Bad Odors” in which there is a quotation from the "Proceedings of the American Society of Civil Engineers" which reads as follows: "Rather curiously, although twenty-four-hour operations were maintained, (in garbage reduction works) these peripatetic smells became more offensive after sundown. Evidently the sun's rays possessed a deodorizing power which was joyfully welcomed by the burdened population through those months of torment." Coming from a scientific source this article would suggest to the mind of the casual lay reader that the sun actually does kill bad odors in the atmosphere, as it kills disease germs, when, as a matter of fact, the reason why bad odors are more noticeable at night than during the daytime is due to the fact that during the day the sun warms the surface of the earth, which in turn warms the air next to it, and the air when so warmed be comes lighter than the air above it which has not been warmed and consequently rises, taking with it the objectionable odors which it may contain, and when the surface air reaches the higher levels it is soon carried away by upper air currents and the odors it may contain are dissipated. During the night, however, the sun does not warm the earth, but instead the earth gives off heat by radiation and its surface becomes colder than the air above it. Then it takes heat from the surface air, thereby cooling it and causing such surface air to become heavier than the air above that. This surface air, being heavier than the air over it, clings to the earth with all its odors, and if a gentle breeze is blowing it is carried along the earth's surface without being mixed to any considerable extent with the upper and purer air, and therefore at night the odors may travel a great distance before they disappear. A civil engineer must come into contact with meteorological phenomena almost constantly in the course of his work, and it seems strange that an elementary knowledge of meteorology is not made a necessary part of an engineering course. And it is not only civil engineers that would find a knowledge of meteorology a useful adjunct to their education. In nearly every walk of life we must come into contact with meteorological phenomena, and if we know nothing of its principles we are apt to make wild guesses as to what is taking place in the air around us. It would seem that the American Meteorological Society could do a great good to mankind by pointing out the necessity for teaching elementary meteorology in every public school in the land, thereby giving the coming generation a working knowledge of the everyday phenomena of the air.Cola W. Shepard. NOTES By Science Service Odors from the Lake Island garbage plant, formerly operated near New York City, were seriously offensive at a distance of 8 miles. The smells were generally much stronger by night than by day. The oldest record of weather observations now extant was kept by William Merle, first at Oxford and afterward at Driby, England, during the years 1337-1344. Thousands of almanacs have published "Herschel's Weather Table" for predicting the weather from the time of day the moon "changes." This table is sheer nonsense and the astronomer whose name it bears had nothing to do with concocting it. What is believed to be the highest temperature for growth in plants of higher order was recorded at Tuscon, Arizona, and shows that some joints of prickly pear continued to elongate at a temperature of 133.7 degrees Farenheit. When the temperature rose higher, elongation ceased, but resumed when later the temperature dropped again. It is estimated that one-third of an inch is removed from the surface of marble monuments in a century by the acid-laden rain of towns. It takes a big block of fog to make one good swallow of water, says Dr. W. J. Humphreys of the U. S. Weather Bureau. The densest fog off Newfoundland Banks contains some 20,000 droplets in a cubic inch, Drs. Wells and Thuras of the Bureau of Standards, found. To get one gulp of water, enough fog to fill a space three feet by six feet by a hundred feet long would have to be condensed. In a fog of that size there are 60,000,000,000,000-pronounce it sixty trillion-particles of water, or three times as many particles as the number of dollars spent by the United States during the World War. "It would take about a half-hour to count an inch of fog particles," says Dr. Humphreys. "Placed side by side 2500 to 3000 droplets would be needed to fill that length." The droplets in a cloud have been found to be, on the average, twice the size of fog particles. Helium Dirigible Sails Better, as well as Safer, Than Hydrogen-Filled Ships-Paradoxical though it may seem, the helium gas, twice as heavy as hyodrogen with 92 per cent of its lifting power, acts, in an airship, just as a heavy automobile on a road at high speed, in comparison with a light car. Wind currents do not deflect it easily from its path and after it gets under way it travels more smoothly. If Dirigibles, in flying, pick up static electricity from the atmosphere. With hydrogen ships there was always danger, in landing, since when the ship touched the ground an electric spark of considerable power resulted. this spark touched the envelope, fire and an explosion was extremely likely to result. Helium being absolutely non-inflammable, does away with this danger. |