The Philosophy of the Weather. And a Guide to Its Changes

by T. B. Butler

By the middle of June the atmospheric machinery approaches its northern acme, the summer sets in, and not unfrequently, as extremely hot days occur during the latter part of the month, as at any period of the summer. But the heat is not so continuous, or great, at a mean.

From the middle of June to the latter part of August is summer in our climate, and during that period from one to three or four terms of extreme heat occur, continuing from one to five or six days, and possibly more, terminating finally in a belt of showers overlaid with more or less cirro-stratus condensation in the trade, and controlled by the S. E. polar wave of magnetism, and followed by a cool but gentle northerly wind. During these “heated terms,” a general showery disposition sometimes, though rarely, appears, with isolated showers, which bring no mitigation of the heat. Not until a southern extension of them appears, followed by a N. W. air, does the term change, so far as I have observed.

By the 20th of August, in the latitude of 42°, an evident change of transit is observable, by one who watches closely, although the range of the thermometer in the day-time may not disclose it. A greater tendency to cirrus-formation is visible. The nights grow cooler in proportion to the days. The swallows are departing, or have departed; the blackbirds, too, and the boblinks, with their winter jackets on, their plumage all changed to the same colors, are flocking for the same purpose, and hurrying away. The pigeons begin to appear in flocks from the north, and the first of the blue-winged teal and black duck are seen straggling down the rivers. At this season, and nearly coincident with the change, the peculiar annual catarrhs return. These are colds (so called) which at some period of the person’s life were taken about or soon after the period of change, and have returned every year, at, or near the same period. They soon become habitual, and no care or precaution will prevent them. I know one gentleman who has had this annual cold in August for twenty-seven years, with entire regularity; and another who has had it nineteen years; and many others for shorter periods. I never knew one which had recurred for two or three years that could be afterward prevented, or broken up. Very instructive are these annual catarrhs to those who think health worth preserving, and in relation to the change of transit.

The change is felt over the entire hemisphere. Between the 20th of August and the 10th of September hurricanes originate in the tropics and pursue their curving and recurving way up over us; or long “north-easters” commence in the interior and pass off to E. N. E. on to the Atlantic, followed now in a more marked degree by the peculiar N. W. wind, so common over the entire Continent in autumn and winter.

By the 10th of September the pigeons may be seen in flocks in the morning, and just prior to the setting in of a brisk N. W. wind, hurrying away southward with a sagacity that we scarcely appreciate, to avoid the anticipated rigors of winter, and to be followed soon by all the migratory feathered tribes that remain.

The nights grow cooler, although the sun shines hot in the day-time, and woe to the person, unless with an iron constitution, who disregards the change, and exposes himself or herself without additional protection, to its influence. Nature has taken care of those who depend upon her, or upon instinct, for protection. The feathers of birds and water-fowl are full; the hair and the fur are grown. Beasts and birds have been preparing for the change, and are ready when it begins. They know that the earth is changing. The shifting machinery is fast carrying south that excess of negative electricity which has so much to do with giving it its summer heat. They feel its absence, even during the day, and the contrast between that and the positively electrified northern atmosphere, which now follows every retreating wave of condensation.

The musk-rat builds, of long grass and weeds, his floating nest in the pond, that he may have a place to retire to, when the rain fills it up and drives him from his burrow in its banks.

But man, with all his intellect, is too heedless of the change. Additional clothing is now as necessary to him as to animals, but it is burdensome to him in the day time, and therefore he will not wear it, how much soever it would add to his comfort and safety during the night. He stands with his thin summer soles upon the changed ground, or sits in a current, or in the night air, less protected than the animals, and dysentery or fever sends him to his long home. He has intelligence, but he lacks instinct. He has time for the changes of dress which fashion may require, but none for those which atmospherical changes demand. Fashion has attention in advance; death none till at the door.

Now the southern line of the extra-tropical belt of rains descends upon those who, living between the areas of magnetic intensity, have a dry season; and the focus of precipitation in that belt descends every where. “Winter no come till swamps full,” the Indians told our fathers, and there is truth in the remark; although like other general truths respecting the weather, it is not always so in our climate. Rains fall during the autumnal months, as during the spring months, and while the transit of the machinery is active and the evaporation is less. And the magnetic comparative rest, and the seed time and equable “spell” of April is reproduced in the Indian summer of autumn.

The machinery gradually and irresistibly descends, and with an excess of polar positive electricity, comes snow; Boreas controls, and winter sets in, reaching its maximum of cold in January again.