“WHO'S WHO AMONG THE WINDS”

Evening Star, Issue 20310, 19 October 1929, Page 6

“WHO'S WHO AMONG THE WINDS”

TORNADOS’ TOLL IN AMERICA ■ The National Geographic Society (U.S.A.) is rendering good service in its endeavour to eliminate the present, looseness,'in the popular use of names descriptive of the various kind’s of air in motion. Two of the- definitions in its ‘ Who’s Who Among the Winds 3 are as follow; ’ , Tornado.—A violent, powerful -whirlwind, covering a. small area, that sucks up heavy objects or twists them .from their more important . than the horizontal ones. : ,

Hurricane.—A violent, circular system of winds in the tropica ■ and semi-, tropics of the Atlantic and Caribbean, covering a considerable area and moving long: distances. These are the strongest of the predominantly horizontal winds. One ‘hundred miles an hour is their usual maximum ; for ’ the winds towards the centre of circulation. The ‘ Daily Science News Bulletin ’ (Washington) of Science Service recently stated that “ about a hundred tornadoes occur each year in the United States, and they take toll of about 300 lives yearly on the average.” This toll of life is far below that of the automobile, but it is more spectacular. The Weather Bureau does not issue forecasts of tornadoes other than to warn of “severe local storms.” RECENT TORNADOES.

Of recent tornadoes in the United States, that known as the St. Louis tornado, of September 29, 1927, was the most destructive.

The total length of the storm path was about twenty miles/ eight miles of which were, within the city limits of St. Louis. 'The zone of greatest-destruc-tion had a varying width of from 300 ft to 600 ft, and its centre was not far from the geographic centre of the city and about three miles west from the principal business section. In the few minutes between 1 p.m.‘ and 1.10 of the storm’s passage, a residential district covering over 200 blocks was transformed into a mass of wreckage. More than 3,000 houses were seriously damaged, the total damage to buddings being approximately 25,000,000 dollars. Street ears and electric and telephone installations suffered heavy losses, and it was estimated that 2,400 automobiles' parked: and in service along streets, or housed in structures within the wake of the storm, wore damaged. The death list, however, reached the small number of but eightytwo and the cases of serious injury demanding hospital attention were less than 1,000. If the storm had passed an hour earlier, when school children and the noonday traffic were on the streets, the lots of life and personal injury would undoubtedly _ have been much greater.— ‘ Engineering.’