Phenomenal Showers

Manawatu Times, Volume LVI, Issue 6519, 7 April 1931, Page 12

Phenomenal Showers

QUEEN THINGS FROM THE SKY. Recently dispatches from a place in Colorado, United States, stated that a great shower of sulphur had occurred there. A yellow powder resembling sulphur actually fell in abundance, but microscopic examination proved it to be pollen, blown from pine trees growing some miles from the place of deposit. Similar showers of so-called sulphur are common. So are showers of something that bears a certain resemblance to blood. In other cases, things that fall from aloft, or that are found on the ground and arc supposed to have fallen, include fishes, frogs, toads, tadpoles, insects and grain, besides substances mistaken for flesh, milk, ink and pare. Showers of “manna” did not cease with Biblical days, and there are several other items on the list of things occasionally reported to have fallen to the earth after the manner of rain, says Popular Mechanics. It is well-known that while some plants, especially those with showy flowers, are pollinated by insects, there are others that depend entirely upon the winds to transport their pollen from flower to flower. W\.d-borno pollen of many species causes hay fever, and studies recently made of it with reference to this effect have yielded some rather astonishing information as to the amount of pollen present, at times, in the air, and the distances to which it may be carried by the winds. Pines and some of the other conifers are among the most prolific of pollen producers. The air in the vicinity of a pine forest is sometimes filled with visible clouds of this substance, and the wreathing columns of it rising from the trees have been mistaken for the smoke of a forest fire. The torvn of Lund, Sweden, is said to have been showered wdth pollen from a pine forest 35 miles awrny.

The vortex of a tornado or a waterspout furnishes the most favourable skyward route for things that belong on the earth or in the water. Objects weighing scores or even hundreds of pounds are lifted by these whirls. A chicken coop weighing 751 b. has been carried four miles by a tornado, and a

church spire 17 miles. The Danish scientist Oersted tells of a waterspout at Ohristianso, on the Bi tic, that emptied the harbour to such an extent that the greater part of the bottom was uncovered.