Rensselaer Republican, Volume 13, Number 23, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 24 February 1881 — Rainfall Next Summer. [ARTICLE]

Rainfall Next Summer.

The eflect a winter which firings heavy snowfall in the Rocky mountains is always followed by a summer that brings an abundance of rain to the Missouri Valley. This doesn’t rest upon guess work, like the predictions of almanac-makers, nor upon the supposed influence of certain planets, like the forecasts of Tice and Vennor, but is based upon the simple scientific proposition, which the experience of many years has proved to be correct that the melting of snow’ in the Rocky mountains constitutes the principal souhce of the rainfall iij all this portion of the continent. The snowjnelting hr tlie mountains rises In the form of vapor, and in this form is born eastword until it comes in contact with a warmer current, when it is precipitated in the form of rain. Observations taken at this point for twenty consecutive years show’ that this rule has never failed—a winter of heavy snowfall in the mountains is followed by an abundant rainfall in this vicinity the next summer, and when there is but little snow *in the mountains there is but little rain here the following summer. All accounts agree that the fall of snow in the niohntains this winter is heavy, and therefore, according to the rule, we may look for an abundant rainfall next summer.— Leavenwort Speaking of our great wheat crops, the American Miller remarks that few ix-ople ir our own country realize how inexhaustible our resources are for wheat growing. The total area of lands available for wheat culture in the United States is not less than 470, * 000,000 acres. Our entire wheat crop of the past year would not supply seed enough to sow so vast an area of wheat land. •» ,