Evening Republican, Volume 16, Number 201, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 22 August 1912 — Weather. [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

Weather.

We became greatly interested in the weather during the last hot spell, and after much research, consisting of interviewing the weather authorities and reading their statements explaining beat, we jjiave assembled these helpful facts: t, The hot wave was caught by a high barometric pressure at a distance. The high barometric pressure was at a distance because it was not here, and it was caused by the absence of a low barometric pressure. It was not a hot wave. Heat does not travel in waves; neither does cold. As a matter of fact, we have neither heat nor cold in the general acceptance of Jhese terms. When we have a high barometric 'pressure maintained for a pro-. longed period, the influx of attenuated air from the contiguous territory aids the rays ,of the sun in increasing the. apparent calorification of the atmosphere. This peculiarity, however, is only noticeable to a height of four miles from earth. At thirty miles up we find no heat whatever. We derive our sensations of heat and cold from the diffusion of m'olecules in the radial territory. This .should be clear to any thinking person. One might aslj what keeps the air where it is kept until the high barometric pressure is dissipated. To this the answer is that it is not kept. It is not there to be kept. Air is not anywhere. Air is everywhere. Air is neither hot nor cold. It is just air. A high barometric pressure obtains, say, in the south temperate zone in December. Therefore we say it is summer there and winter here. In fact, the terms summer and winter mean nothing. When the barometric pressure is lowered, the temperature is also. Thus, at a certain time of the year it is lowered to the point where snow falls. This is what, for lack of a positive term, we call winter. And, vice versa, we get summer. There is no such thing as weather What we designate as weather is the recurrent manifestation of differing barometric pressures in or away from some place. This produces changes in our atmospheric envelope, and we say we are warm, or cold, as the case may be, when we are neither. There is no such thing as weather, nor is there rain, snow, cold or heat These are merely sequelae of the stages of barometric pressure. In this article we have crystallized, so far as we are able, the excellent dicta of the acknqyrfedged weather experts, men who treat our daily weather with the utmost nonchalance. Henceforth none of ur should worry over the weather, which is no such thing, anyhow, nor over heat or cold, which are simply symptomatic effects and not prime causes of our sensations. Let us get this all unkinked in our minds and from now on greet cud friends with: “It’s a nice barometric pressure we are having this morning,” or “Looks like we might get a little heavier barometric pressure,” or “How does your father stand the pressure this summer?"