Hot Winds Of The Plains

The New York State Commission on Ventilation made a number of experiments in supplying moisture to the air of schoolrooms, and reached the conclusion that this process produces no marked improvement in either the health, or the efficiency of the children. Its principal observed effect was to make the air "stuffy," and disagreeable. There are, however, some sound arguments against maintaining a Saharan climate indoors. It is bad for furniture and book-bindings, and it is wasteful of fuel. More moisture in the atmosphere ensures the same degree of comfort at a lower temperature, and thus cuts down the coal bill.

The desiccating winds in certain parts of the world are celebrated for their effects. The foehn of the Alps and the chinook of the eastern Rocky Mountain slope—winds of identical character under different names— have the reputation of being hungry as well as thirsty, for the nickname "snoweater" is applied to them both. This name refers to the magical speed with which snow disappears when exposed to these blasts, which blow down from the mountains and are heated and dried by compression.

The chinook is credited with devouring a foot of snow in a few hours, without leaving a trickle of water behind. While it is welcomed by the cattlemen, its parching breath increases the danger of forest fires. Similarly, in the Swiss valleys, the foehn reduces all woodwork to the condition of matchwood, and there are localities where the authorities forbid the lighting of fires of any kind—even to the smoking of a cigarette—while the wind is blowing. The so-called "hot winds of the Plains" are a scourge of agriculture in the western United States east of the Rockies. Not only is moisture evaporated from the soil, but growing vegetation is literally dried out as it stands. If the hot winds happen to come at a critical period in the growth of a crop, they may cause heavy damage within a few hours. In one case of recurring hot winds in Kansas some years ago, over 10,000,000 bushels of corn was ruined, and the crop was reduced by 10,000,000 more. Vegetation withers; leaves crumble to dust at the touch; corn, wheat and other cereals look as if they had been scorched by fires; apples are described as being baked while hanging on the trees.

Southern Australia is afflicted with "hot winds" of equal severity. Dry air is an essential condition of big forest fires. Lightning often starts them, and wind spreads them: but low humidity—the thirst of the air—is the most important element in what has come to he called, in recent years, "fire weather." The Weather Bureau, the Forest Service and various local organizations interested in forest protection have joined forces in making a thorough study of such weather, and in maintaining special arrangements for predicting it. Thus the reading of hygrometers has become a routine task of foresters, and rather striking relations have been discovered between these instruments and forest fires.

By: davidbunch

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