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Show delicate instruments. It Is so excessively exces-sively minute that whatever effect it may have on our atmosphere must be completely swamped and obliterated by the enormously greater effects of solar energy. EQUINOCTIAL STORMS ONLY SUPERSTITION U. S. Weather Bureau Says Belief Is Mythical. Washington. The weather bureau nt Washington has just dispelled several sev-eral common superstitions concealing the weather. In both Europe and America there is an old belief that a severe storm the so-called "equinoctial "equinoc-tial storm" or "equinoctial gale" is due about the date of either equinox, that is, March 21 or September 22, or more particularly about the date of the autumnal or vernal equinox, says the New York Times. "The fallacy of this idea consists In Identifying any storm that occurs within a weok or several weeks of the equinox as ihe equinoctial storm," says the bureau. "Statistics show that there is no maximum of storm frequency fre-quency either In this country or in Europe close to the date of either equinox. Of course, In the long run storms do occur about these dates, just as they occur at all other times In the year. No reason why storms should be especially frequent around the equinoxes Is known to meteorologists. meteorolo-gists. "In the United States the belief in the equinoctial storm as an event of regular occurrence has perhaps been fustered by the fact that West Indian hurricanes are most common in the lute summer and early autumn. Called Equinoctial Anyway. Occasionally a severe storm of this lharncter sweeps up our Atluntic seaboard, sea-board, doing a great deal of damage and attracting general attention. If it happens anywhere near September 22 the event Is sure to be heralded as 'the equinoctial storm.' " Commenting on the moon's influence on the weather, the bureau says: "Modern science Is unable to find any evidence that the moon affects the weather to an appreciable extent, and unable to conceive of any reason why it should. The movements of the atmosphere at-mosphere that give us different kinds of weather all involve the expenditure of an Immense amount of energy in the form of heat. Such energy comes to us from the sun, and its varying effects ef-fects depend mainly upvn the varying positions of the earth as it revolves around the sun and rotates on Its axis. The moon has no heat of Its own. It merely gives off into space that which ; it receives from the sun, and a small fraction of tills reaches the earth. The amount of heat we receive from the moon has been measured with very |