Yorkville Enquirer

CAUSE OF TORNADO
Noted Meteorologist Says it Was Result of Irrigation in Far West

The tornado which did great property damage in Western York county last Wednesday and which took such a heavy toll of life and property over South Carolina and other southern states had its origin in the intensely heated irrigation country of the Rocky Mountain region, according to Dr. E. B. Dunn, formerly in charge of the United States weather bureau in New York city. Dr. Dunn gives his explanation of the catastrophe in the following article.

The violent cyclone which swept the southern states on Tuesday and Wednesday, causing the loss of close to one hundred lives and leaving wreck and desolation along its track, is but one of hundreds of storms which have their birth over the intensely heated irrigated country of the Rocky Mountain region, principally southern Arizona and southern California, which has in recent years become the breeding place of most of our violent storms.

Our southwest, in fact, has become the best little storm breeder in the world. As long as man continues to spread water over an intensely heated desert country the rest of the population had better keep its ears to the ground for just such havoc as devastated parts of the southern states this week.

There is a reason and that reason is irrigation. With the extension of irrigation, cloud bursts, floods, cyclones and tornadoes will become more numerous and dangerous.

On Tuesday morning the storm had become a well rounded out cyclone of considerable intensity, then central over Oklahoma and Kansas, with an egg-shaped outline reaching from Iowa to the Gulf coast over Texas.

Heavy rain was then falling over most of the southwestern states. As the storm moved eastward it was preceded by unseasonably high temperature and was followed on its western side by much colder weather. In fact freezing temperatures were recovered over a large belt in the southwest.

The crowding of this cold toward the warmer air gave unmistakable evidence of the formation of tornadoes on the southern and southwestern margin of the cyclone where tornadoes always form, due to the clashing of the warmer and cooler currents. The colder air overruns the warmer air which starts a whirling motion which, in most cases, reaches a velocity of 400 or 500 miles and destroys within its reach. The funnel swings forth and back and jumps from place to place as it moves east or northwest. Its suction covers an area of from fifty feet to two miles.

The tornadoes began to form on Wednesday morning. The first was over Arkansas and Louisiana and during the day increased in number, and it is possible that three or more were in operation at one time. As the general cyclone moved eastward the tornadoes occurred in Alabama, Georgia, Virginia, North and South Carolina.

It was very unusual for tornadoes to spread over such a wide area and do such great damage. It is an evidence that the farther irrigation spreads to the south the greater will be the recurrent danger.