TURPAIN'S THUNDERSTORM RECORDER
Or ceraunograph. This is one of several instruments designed to register the natural electric waves, or "strays," which sometimes interfere seriously with the transmission of wireless telegrams. Strays are often generated by lightning discharges, near or distant, and this instrument therefore serves to give notice of an approaching thunderstorm
A blizzard is a high, cold wind, accompanied by blinding snow, which in winter sometimes blows out of the front of an advancing anticyclone, especially in our North-Central States. A similar wind, with or without snow, is called in Texas a norther.
A chinook is a warm, dry wind that descends the eastern slope of the Rocky Mountains in Montana, Wyoming and Colorado, and flows north-eastward over the plains. Its effects are most pronounced in winter, when it brings about a very sudden rise in the temperature—in extreme cases as much as forty degrees in fifteen minutes! It causes snow to vanish as if by magic, and is appropriately nicknamed the "snow-eater."
IN THE WAKE OF A TORNADO
The tornado destroyed a house and barn, but left a path in the center with practically no harm done
"Cloudburst" is merely a picturesque name for a very heavy shower; usually a thunder-shower.
West India hurricanes occasionally visit the United States, especially in the late summer and early autumn. These storms begin as violent cyclones of small extent (300 to 600 miles in diameter), usually somewhere east of the West Indies, sweep in a long curve across the Caribbean Sea, and then turn north, either passing up along the Atlantic Coast or crossing the Gulf of Mexico into the southern United States. Soon after entering the temperate zone they increase in size and diminish in violence, but are still vigorous enough on reaching the Gulf or South Atlantic Coast to cause great devastation. Low-lying shores are often inundated by the immense waves they generate.
