PREEICTING TORNADOES.

New Zealand Times, Volume XLVI, Issue 7775, 6 May 1886, Page 4

PREEICTING TORNADOES.

We learn from a circular issued by Mr William A. Eddy, the reporter of the United States Signal Service Department, that great progress has been made in America within a few years in the study of storms. Mr Eddy calls attention to the fact that some of the terrible losses of life and property due to tornadoes can be averted. In 1882 Professor T. B. Maury asserted, what was then the fact, that the prediction of a tornado was a triumph yet to be attained by the science of meteorology. In less than two years from that time some predictions of tornadoes were successfully made by Lieutenant John P. Finley, of the Signal Service. The percentage of verified predictions is being steadily increased by a knowledge of the average conditions preceding each series of tornadoes, thus making the predictions more definite and local with each succeeding year. Already the predictions, which enable measures of precautions to be adopted for the day, are effective. Of 3228 predictions of tornadoes made in 1884, 3201 were verified, and of thirty-eight predictions that tornadoes would occur, made in April and June 1884, eighteen were verified. Of nineteen predictions that tornadoes would occur, made in June and July 1885, fifteen were verified. When tornadoes were predicted, in no instance did violent storms fail to occur, either hurricanes, tornadoes, or hail storms. ■