Springfield Weekly Republican

The Southern Storm

The destructive storm which has ravaged six southern states was of unusual magnitude and severity, and was even more exceptional in its course. For several of the states visited it was the worst on record, but for the country as a whole it was not of unexampled severity and destructiveness though fortunately such storms are rare.

The lamentable loss of life which they usually cause is due as a rule not to the main storm but to the local tornadoes which are apt to appear singly or in clusters within the cyclonic area. This is specially likely to happen in the spring months, when sharp contrasts of temperature between neighboring strata of air may cause an isolated tornado even if no great storm is passing. Fortunately tropical disturbances, as meteorologists call the great revolving storms originating in the Caribbean or the Gulf of Mexico, are much less common in the spring than in late summer, when if they stray inland they are more likely to cause violent rainfall than tornadoes.

Several storms like the one which has caused such havoc in the South have crossed the United States in recent times, but as a rule they have moved northward across the Mississippi basin to the great lakes. This time, however, the way seems to have been barred by an area of high pressure moving down from the northwest, with the effect of shunting the cyclone eastward across the southern states until with reduced energy it reached the seaboard in Virginia. Of the six states which bore its brunt some lie fairly within the tornado belt, while for others the appearance of a full-grown "twister" is almost as rare a phenomenon as in the northeastern states. The magnitude of the cyclonic disturbance and the season of the year seem to have combined to make the number of these destructive whirlwinds unusually great and no doubt at least some of them were of the first magnitude. They developed along a belt 1000 miles in length, and probably only part of them have yet been reported. Like whirlpools in swirling water they develop and cease and form again, and to chart a whole nest of them over so wide an area requires long investigation by the government's scientists.

The afflicted states will have the sympathy of the whole country, and if help is needed it will be promptly forthcoming. Apart from the sad loss of life, much misery must have been caused by the destruction of homes, farm property, live stock, etc.; the desolation of survivors who have lost everything is extreme. But fortunately only a very small part of the area traversed by the storm was in the path of one of the incidental tornadoes, and the property loss may prove smaller than was at first feared. The blow is the heavier because it fell on a section of the country which is not accustomed to such calamities, but fortunately they are likely to be as rare in the future as they have been in the past.