508 MONTHLY WEATHER REVIEW DECEMBER, 1929
expansion. It therefore comes to that particular tem-
perature a t which it can lose heat by radiation nt exactly the same rate that it gains heat by absorption. From
this level up the intensity of the radiation from the earth
and atmosphere below is practically independent of
height. That is why t,emperature up there also is independent of height. It doesn't change appreciably
even from day to night, and so we infer that i t is not, niuch
affected by sunshine directly.
Thus again we had come to that state of mentnl enw
that goeth niith understanding. But the ense mas of
short duration. It soon was found that the upper air, the
stratosphere, as scientists now call it, is coldest over
equatorial regions and becomes gradually w;Rriner with
increase of latitude, the extreme difi'erence being ~rouncl
3 5 O B.-coldest over the warmest enrth and warmest over the coldest earth. Here W'BL a poser, and u e are not
through trying to esplnin it yet. And now they (certain
scientists) tell us that up beyond tlie highest reach o i our
balloons there is ozone in the very thin air. Well, that is
what we would expect froni the fact that ozone is produced
whenever a certain portion of ultrn-violet rndintion fdls on osygen. But botheration again! There seems to be least ozone over tropical regions, where we would expect
ICE STORM OF DECEMBER
most, and more and mor6 with incrense of distance from
the equator, and not less and less. Well, this isn't es- plained yet either, hut we can make use of it, and that is what we propose now to do.
Ozone is a powerful cbsorber of the long wave-length radiation that goes out from the earth and its water-
soaked atmosphere. Furthermore, u hatever quantity of
radiation the ozone absorbs, t h n t same quantity, changed
in part to other wive lengths, i t must reradiate, otherwise
it clearly would do what obviously i t is not doing, that is,
continnously get either warmer or colder. Now, as the radiation hy the ozone evidently is as much in one direc-
tion as another, half of i t is back towards the lower
ntinosphere. It also is evident that where there is least
ozone the percentnge of absorption and reradiation also
is least. and as the qiiantity of the ozone increases so also - does this percentage of return rndiation. I n short, one reason (not the only one) why the stratosphere becomes
colclcr nnd colder ns we go from high latitudes to the
Equator, is because tho ozone hlsnliet a t the same time
gro1is thinner. It is a little like sleeping w-arnily out-
doors under quilt or shivering under a sheet-lots
depends on tlie kind and quantity of covering one has.
17-18, 1929, AT BUFFALO, N. Y.
5-3-'/. 578. if ( 747) By J . H. SPENCER, Weather Bureau
On the morning weat.her map of Dece,mber 17, 1929,
pressure was high nlong the Canadian border and to the northward, while a moderate LOW e.xtended from the
southern part of the upper Lake region southwestwardly to Oklahoma and northern Tesas. Light n0rt.h to east winds resulted in the Lake region. The striking feature
on the weather map of this date was the fact t.ha.t 1node.r-
ate to heavy rains were falling over the southern half of
the Lake region, with temperature below the freezing point a t the surface. The. temperature a t 8 a. m. at,
Buffalo, for instance, was 26O, rain falling at the time. Rain continued throughout the day and most of the night,
exceeding an inch. Part of the heavy rain a t Buffalo froze as it fell, or soon
after, making streets and sidewalks very slippery and
dangerous, but sloppy above the ice in many sec.tions. Practically all the time that rain fell the temperature
was below freezing. The resulting ice storm of Tuesda,y and Tuesday night, December 17, wa.s one of the worst
of record here. Hundreds of street trees were severely
damaged. The weight of the ice Tuesday night was at least. double t,hat which resulted from t.he ico storm of
De.cember 7 and 8. Tree branches the size of an ordinary
lead pencil were enlar ed by theice to the thickness of 1 to
broken off by the weight of the ice, great damage resulting.
Forsythia branch.-Length, 1 yard 4 inches. No
lateral twigs. Tota.1 weight, with ice, 1% pounds; without
ice, 3x ounce. Greatest diameter of ice, 1% inch to full
l )h inch. Slightly uneven, due to buds a t 2 to 3 inch intervals. Top dianiet,er of ice was 1 inc.h and narrowing to a knife blade a t bot,t,om. (See fig. 1.)
Thic.kness of ice above wood, about Ji inch; below wood,
% to 96 inch. Weight of wood, X ounce. Diameter of
wood alone, inch a t small end and % inch at large end.
Ice coating was as thick a t one end as a t t,hc other.
Elm branches.-From one large limb lying on the street
I broke off four tips, each about 15 inches long, and with
lj4 inches. Thousan f s of limbs as large as one's arm were
ICE O N BRANCHES
lateral twigs, without disturbing the ice. Collectively they weighed, with ice, 2); pounds; without ice, 3 ounces.
One ornamental tree in my yard, as large as a full-
grown fruit tree, was completely broken down. I broke
off a tip 28 inches Iong, with lat-
weight, with ice, l )h pounds; with- 1.'- out ice, 1 ounce. It was impos- I
sible t o see between the i c y
branches of this tree; that is, one
could not see the street or any
object on the other side of the tree, so heavy was the ice on the limbs.
Afte.r these measurements were made, I brought the ic.e-covered
branches into a warm room, with
temperature of 70°, and i t took more than two hours for the ice to
melt away sufficiently for it to break away from the wood.
This illustrates roughly how difficult it is in a cold climate to get rid of the ice before it does great damage merely
by remaining on objects for many hours and often days after the ice storm occurs.
era1 t,wigs, from one branch; I I
FIGUBB 1
AFTER THE ICE STORM
Cold weather, with temperature below freezing, and
without sunshine, continued through December 18, 19,
and 20. Ice remained as heavy on trees and wires as
on the night of the 17th and 18th. On the 19th there was more than an inch of sleet (very small ice pellets that looked, in the aggregate, like snow, but of great
weight). Following this, a 50-mile gale blew most of the time for 24 hours, beginning soon after 8 a. m. of the 20th; and on the night of the 20th and 21st there was a
G-inch fall of snow, which drifted badly. These long- continued severe conditions caused great damage and
much hardship in the Buffalo district and throughout
western New York.
DECEMBER, 1929 MONTHLY WEATHER REVIEW 509
To combat the situation many hundreds of linesmen
were brought in from distant cities to repair the damage
on telephone and telegraph lines; traction companies operated with difficulty; some bus lines were unable to
operate a t all; electric light service wns interrupted, failing entirely in many sections; hundreds of aiitoinobiles were
stalled along the highwnys; rnilroad trains ran hours
late; all the principnl radio st’ntions were unable to operate; large numbers of nerinls were down; “ Christmas shop- ping” was intcrfered with; and numerous injuries and
several deaths were attributed to the storms. Rarely indeed has this section been visited by such n procession of severe storms.
Most of the great damage to trees occurred on the
night of the I i t h and l s t h , during a compnrative calm;
while the greater part of the damage to telephone and telegraph lines followed that date, particularlj- during
the gale on the day of the 20th and night of the 20th
and 21st. Damnge froin all these conditions will be between one and a half to two millions or more; but no
one will know for several weeks to come. I think the
above is n conservative estimate.
OUTSTANDING FEATURES
Alniost incredible quantities oE ice accumulated on (See special refer- trees, shrubbery, and other object,s.
ence thereto.) The streets and boulevards of Buffalo
were so badly cluttered up with broken-off branches after the storm that an appropriation of $50,000 was asked for
to clean up the city. It will cost I believe, several times
t8hatl amount to replnce t,rees and trim up those that can be saved. I have seen in other parts of the country dam-
age to t,elephone and telegraph lines quite as severe as
occurred here, but never, anything like the damage to trees. All night long of tBhe 17th nnd 18tmh one was kept awnke by the breaking limbs, which snapped off with a
report much louder than a rifle shot. It was a depressing
and never-to-be-forgotten esperience. Otherw’se the night wns quiet, there being very little wind. In 35 years’ esperience I have never seen Weather Bu-
reau instrunient,s so completely frozen up. The vane and anemometer were heavily caked \nth ic,e and put out of
c.ommissiori both a.t the downt,own ofice and the airport. There was a mass of ice more t h m 2 inches t.hick on one
side of t8he sunshine recorder.
The losses mount up, &s the work of restoration pro- gresses. I think this is approximately correct: Total losses in western New Tork, including the Buf-
falo and Rochest,er dist8rict,s, were around $3,000,000, per-
haps more. More thnn 8,000 telephone poles were c.ari-ied down by the sleet and wind, with approximately 15,000
miles of wire. The telephone companies alone sustained
a loss of approximately $2,000,000.
HAILSTORMS OF 1929 IN THE UNITED STATES
ss/. 3-7-g. 7 c 73) By S. D. FLORA
[Weather Bureau omce, Topeks, Kans.]
[Condenscd from a report by the author]
Hail damage was severe and widespread during 1929
but not as bad as in 1928, which was one of the worst,
if not the worst, hail years in the history of the country. While the total loss by hail for 1929, like that of previous
years, will probably never be known definitely, the
United States Weather Bureau received reports of more than 225 severe hailstorms during the year with pro- perty losses exceeding $10,000,000. The total losses
will greatly exceed these estinintes from outstanding
storms as there were hundreds, possibly thousands, of
falls of light or moderate hail, most of them doing but little damage for which no statistics are available.
One of the best indexes of hail damage over the country
is the Iowa record, which is compiled from reports col-
lected by the assessors, making that State the only one,
so far as known, that knows the amount of its hail loss. This is given in the following table:
outstanding storms in Kansas, ns reported to the Weather Bureau, totalled $2,403,500, with hundreds of smaller
losses not reported.
Hail is always a special menace in Kansas on account of the immense wheat crop of the State, which approaches maturity during the season when hailstorms are most
likely to occw. In the western third of the State
Weather Bureau records indicate that heavy hail falls three to four tinies a year somewhere in each 10,000
square miles of area. Thirty-eight heavy falls of hail were reported in
Icansas last year and 15 of these occurred in June, with
r the wheat crop almost ready for harvest. Even so, t,he State was more fortunate than in 1928, when it suffered losses of a million dollars or more from each of six hail-
storms. Ten of the 1929 Kansas hailstorms caused
losses of $100,000 or greater each and one that extended from Byers to near Sawyer, diagonally across Pratt
County, on June 13, resulted in a half-million-dollar loss. The path was 1 to 4 miles wide and 30 miles long. Wheat in the area was damaged 20 to 50 per cent.
Two days previous to t8he Pratt County st,orm hail fell
over a path 60 miles long in Rawlins, Decatur, and Norton Counties, in northwestern Kansas, and almost
totally destroyed wheat in some places. The worst of
this storm was felt at New Alenielo, Norton County. The t80tal damage was placed at $300,000. Another of t8he Kansas hailstorms moved from near
NewtJon to Cnssoday, Butler Count8y, on June 12, with
the heaviest damage near DeGrnfl, Cassoday, McLain,
arid Potwin. The total loss was valued at $150,000. Along the path of severest hail wheat was a complete
loss and the oats destroyed in some places. The grain was hammered into the ground until in some fields not a
stem mas left standing. Chickens, ducks, and geese, as. well ns birds, pigeons, and jack rabbits, perished lherally
by the hundreds.