OCR Text |
Show Rain on Ooltl Days Explained. ATany persons, have been puzzled by observing in tho last two storms tho snow turn to rain while tho temperature tempera-ture remained considerably below the freezing point. The explanation- is furnished by the data from kite flights which were made last week at Blue hill in cooperation with tho international scries of ascension ascen-sion of kites and balloons. Kites carrying car-rying recording instruments wero flown on alternate days and entered a warm stratum, whose elevation varied from about 800 feet, on tho 11th, to IISOO feet on tho 15th. Ordinarily the tom-peraturo tom-peraturo at these heights is from il to l0 degrees lower than at the onrth's surface, but duriug last week it was actually some 10 degrees warmer than below. Consequently, as tha storm center cen-ter approached aucl paused a general warming up of the air column, although the temperature at tho ground might not exceed 25 degrees, 3et in tho cloud nt tho same time it -would bo 3o degrees, de-grees, giving precipitation in the form of rain. Whilo these inversions of temperature, tempera-ture, as they arc called, commonly occur oc-cur at somo height in tho atmosphere, yet it is rare that an inversion of such magnitude persists so long as did the ono last week. On tho afternoon of tho loth tho approaching cold wave was pushing in bononth the warm stratum, stra-tum, since the cold docs not desennd from the upper regions, as was formerly for-merly supposed. Boston Transcript. |