276 MONTHLY WFATElER REVIEW. JUNE, 1907
days, for U. S. Weather Bureau a t New York 16.48 days, and
for Meteorological Observatory a t New York 14.03 days. I t
will be seen by these figures that there is a greater number
of days of rainfall a t the two stations in the British Isles than
there has been a t New York, and a much wider range of the
number of days, whereas the records in the city of New York
show that there is a less number of days, and the number of
days is very limited in its range. These figures should efface
from the card of probabilities this superstition of St. Swithin's
Day so far as the climate of the United States is concerned.
Altho the records of the climate of Great Britain show a larger
number of days of rainfall there than in the city of New
York, yet the old legend should receive the same favor there
as in this country. It seems to be almost useless to say any-
thing further regarding the absurdity of this old superstition,
with such an array of telltale figures all set against the legend.
It has been suggested that the greater precipitation a t our
southern coast cities would show a much higher average than
at New York, i f i t did not show that the old legend would at
times hold good; but an examination of the records of two of
the southern weather stations shows that the higher average
during the period is of no moment, and that there has never
been a year when there were 40 successive days of rain after
July 16. - ____ ~-
THE " SANTA ANA " OF CALIFORNIA.
The dust storms of the San Gabriel Valley are described by
Prof. George E. Hale in the following quotation from his re-
port in the Annual Volume for 1906, of the Carnegie Institu-
tion of Washington:
I have previously alluded to the dust storms which sometimes enter the San Gabriel Valley thru the Cajon Pass from the Mojare Desert, and
those much rarer storms in which the dust is carried by the mind com- pletely over the Sierra Madre Mountains. In the more common form of
dust storm (the so-called '' Santa Ana") the dust enters the valley in a
fairly well-defiued mass and proceeds westward along the canpou of the
Santa Ana River. In approaching the coast it spreads over a large area and diffuses itself with tolerable uuiformity thru the lower atninsphere.
I have seen from Mount Wilson a dust storm in the region of Riverside
which in twenty-four hours had spread itself over Los Angeles and
Pasadena. When it reached this part of the valley there was almost no
wind, and the dust seemed to diffuse itself thru the air. Such storms
sometimes completely hide the Sierra Madre Mountains from observer>
in Pasadena. Fortunately they are almost always conflned to the lower
atmosphere, and do not appreciably affect the transparency of the sky
above Mount Wilson, where daily observations show that the trans-
parency of the day and night sky are very satisfactory.
STANDARD TIME.
According to the Monthly Notices, Royal Astronomical So-
ciety, February, 1907, the standard time used in India since
July 1, 1905, has been five hours and thirty minutes fast on
Greenwich time; that of Burma is six and a half hours fast,
but the time ball of the Colaba Observatory, Bombay, which is
about 73O east of Greenwich, drops daily at exactly 3 a. in.,
Greenwich time, or about 8 a. m., local time. The Council at
Port Louis, Mauritius, has decreed that from ancl after Janu-
ary 1, 1907, the standard time for that colony and its depen-
dencies shall be that of the meridian 60' east of Greenwich.
(The longitude of Mauritius is about 58O.) The standard for
the Seychelles is also four hours fast on Greenwich time; but
the standard for the Chagos Archipelago is five hours east of
Greenwich. Theae regular hour standards are convenient for
local use in many respects; but when it comes to interchange
of meteorologid data by cable and wireless, as well as by the
ordinary telegraph and telephone, it would seem that the
time must soon come when the world will find i t best to adopt
the Greenwich time uniformly. We do not, ourselves, appre-
ciate the necessity for having, in India and the ocean south of
it, four different standards (four, five, five and a half, ancl six
and a half hours from Greenwich). The inconvenience of an
irregular and arbitrary system of standards is appreciable,
tho of course not to be compared with the confusion that
existed before any standard was adopted. We fear that the
subdivision into half and quarter hours will do more harm
than good.-EDIToR.
PENALTY FOR COUNTERFEITING FORECASTS.
The Agricultural appropriation bill for the fiscal year end-
ing June 30,1906 [Statutes at Large, vol 33, part 11, contained
the following legislative item:
Any person who shall knowingly issue or publish any counterfeit weather forecasts or warnings of weather conditions, falsely represent-
ing such forecasts or warning3 to have been issued or published by the
Weather Bureau, or other branch of the Go\ernluent service, or shall molest or interfere with any weather or storm flag or weather map or
bulletin dibplaged or issued by the United States Weather Bureau, shall be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor, and, on convictlain thereof, for each
offwse, be fined in a sum not exceeding five hundred dollars, or be im- prisoned not to exceed ninety days, or be both fined and imprisoned, in the
dibcretion of the court -(See Act of Congress approved March 3, 1905.)
EQUINOCTIAL STORMS.
By Piof. E. B. U ~R R I ~I T T .
~
The term " equinoctial storms " has for centuries been
applied to storms that happen near the spring and autumn
equinoctial periods. Like many other popular impressions
regarding imperfectly understood natural phenomena the gen-
eral idea had its origin in observed facts. The clifliculty in
this case has been that the facts concerning the character and
seasonal and geographical limits of storms that are associated
with the equinoxes have gi-i-en way to fancy. The rainy season
of the Tropics, and the dorms of the middle latitudes that
occur in the spring and fall, have been confused with the
severer storms known as hurricanes, cyclones, and typhoons
that are experienced in the tropical and subtropical regions
and even in the middle latitudes in certain seasons of the year.
The rainy season of the Tropics, which is entirely distinct
from the season of equinoctial storms, attends the annual
march of the sun over the equatorial regions. When the sun
in its northward journey crosses the imaginary line of the
equator the rainy season sets in over the northern equatorial
region, and the rain belt keeps pace with the northward move-
ment of the sun until the time of the summer solstice, about
June 21, when the sun reaches the point farthest north in its
course. About that time the rain belt reaches into the north-
ern subtropical regions, like Florida, and the rainy season be-
gins in those regions. I n tropical countries, like the Isthmus
of Panama, there is usually a short, dry season in the interval
following the northward movement of the rain belt and its
return southward with the sun. The characteristics of the
rains of the Tropics are controlled largely by geographical
ant1 topographical features. They come in the form of local
thunderstorms that are often attended by torrential rains and
sometimes by severe wind squalls. Their occurrence is usually
confined to the afternoon and the early portion of the night.
The season of severe tropical, or equinoctial, storms in the
Northern Hemisphere, and more especially in the tropical and
subtropical North Atlantic Ocean, does not begin until the
sun has about half conipleted its return course to the equator.
They occur near the time of the autumnal equinox, and their
season extends from August to October, inclusive. In the
North Atlantic Ocean these stornis are called hurricanes, in
the Indian Ocean, cyclones, and in southeastern Asiatic waters,
typhoons. In the Pacific area the typhoon season begins
earlier and continues later than the liurricane season of the
North Atlantic Ocean.
At first sight it appears that astronomical eventR that fore-
run by several weeks meteorological phenomena can not be
associated with thoRe phenomena in the relation of cause and
effect. Meteorological changes ancl conditions, due to astro-
nomical causes, do not necessarily coincide in time of occur-