Orleans County Monitor

HOW COLD WAVES TRAVEL.

Cold waves, so called, a name for which we are indebted to recent meteorological science, do not appear to move in some instances much faster than a railroad express train. They vary, however, in their rate of motion. Where do they come from?

It is not easy to say. It might be found, if one could travel at express speed from the mountains of Montana, and the frozen regions farther north, that intense cold extends all the way to Eastern Alaska, and to the Behring Strait, with even a greater degree of intensity. In fact, the coldest region is probably the wide expanse west, and especially northwest, of Hudson Bay, in the neighborhood of the magnetic pole. A "cold wave" is a wave of heavy air, following the rarefied track of "low barometer," and changing the rarefied and milder atmosphere (which is usually also stormy) to one of clear, cold skies; a heavy air, full of tonic power, and exhilarating and hunger-producing to sound and healthy animal life. The establishment of the modern government weather observation stations, with their appliances, including the electric telegraph and daily press, has enabled the country to see and comprehend something of the movements of these frequent cold waves. The movement is as marked as the advance of a veritable sea wave.

The telegraph heralds its start from the Rocky mountains (it always seems to begin there, though in fact it rarely does, having its origin much farther north,) and its advance can be timed like that of a railroad train. Its speed varies from forty to sixty, or sometimes even seventy miles an hour, usually it would seem about fifty. It rolls over the country, a real wave, an aerial counterpart on the shore of its congener, the tidal wave of the ocean, and its direction is usually from the northwest to the southeast. It sweeps slowly down from the frozen wastes of the Asiatic shore, and the equally frigid wilds of the American main-land in the arctic circle, to our Atlantic coast, its breadth reaching all the way from Nova Scotia to Cape Hatteras, and frequently making its chilling presence felt as far south as Florida.

The Bermudas which lie just south of the Gulf stream, a little over 600 miles almost due east of Charleston, feel the influence of our "cold waves" very perceptibly. That solitary little group of small, low-lying coral islands which can be reached by a steamer from New York in the same time that it takes to go to Savannah, happen to lie on the leeward side of the Gulf stream; and that great thermal current of the ocean forever saves them from the frost, and keeps them in spring foliage all winter; but, while it finely tempers and modifies the north wind, it cannot quite rob it of all its intrinsic character, and the result is a wind that may be at times cool, and frequently boisterous, but never really cold: and those lonely islands, surrounded by wide-reaching coral reefs, have all winter a pleasant climate of spring. That is almost all they ever know of our winter "cold waves." Those come in an almost rhythmical succession, and have their causes doubtless as potent as those of the ocean's tides, which they strikingly resemble.—Ice Trade Journal.