The river reports are an important feature of the service. The temperature of the waters, surface and deep, taken regularly, makes a record for the benefit of those engaged in the propagation of food fishes, which is becoming an important government work. The stage of water taken in connection with the reports of rainfall and temperature of the atmosphere in their influence upon deep beds of snow and ice-locked streams affords ground for warnings, when needed, to persons engaged in any river traffic, or exposed to floods upon the banks.
The “waves” of temperature have become as real to us as those upon the ocean, and the prosecution of very many kinds of business, or the transportation of perishable produce is guided by the reports of the Weather Bureau, as it foretells the coming of heat or cold. The interior of the country will no doubt soon have the benefit of signals, as well as “bulletins.” A large, white flag, with a square black center, is now displayed at stations in advance of an expected “cold wave,” and before a great while we may expect the “limited express” upon the different railroads will be made the bearer of signals to forewarn the inhabitants of the country through which it passes of the change of weather rapidly following its track. The possibilities of the service seem to be unlimited, but the most careful watchfulness of the “Observers,” and the keen vigilance of the officers who direct them have not yet brought the elements to reveal all their movements. Sometimes, as a wary foe, a storm will steal in between the sentinels, or descend from the upper air, and gathering all its strength into one narrow channel, will drive destruction through town and country, and leave behind it evidences of power which we can hardly credit, except by sight.
One of the many specimens exhibited in the National Museum at Washington is a section of a young oak tree four inches in diameter, with a pine board, one inch thick, four inches wide at one end, and twelve inches wide at the other, which has been driven through the tree more than half its length (eight feet, the label states), and is now held as in a vise, the tree above and below the board being unbroken. This has been deposited in the Museum as an evidence of the force of the wind in a tornado that visited the vicinity of Wesson, Mississippi, April 22, 1883.
The progress of work in the Weather Bureau has been first toward encompassing great interests in the fields indicated by law, then to take up the smaller needs pertaining to individual benefit and pleasure, and as time passes and the service widens there will be personal contact that will give an intimate knowledge and impression of its value which narrative can not.
FOOTNOTES
[A] Died at Buffalo, New York, August 24, 1880.