Rensselaer Republican, Volume 16, Number 2, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 20 September 1883 — In a Thunder Cloud. [ARTICLE]

In a Thunder Cloud.

“The most thrilling incident in a balloon voyage in my experience, ” says Prof. Samuel A. King, the aeronaut, “occurred in a voyage I made froip Burlington, lowa, in 1875. About seven minutes after I had left the ground I was in a wicked-looking thunder-storm. I expected to ride through and come out at the top; not that I have ever been able to do so. Storms seem to reach to a great altitude, three and a half or four miles. I rode along quietly after entering the clouds, and must have reached a great height. Of course, I could not see. Fortunately I went in a large balloon, and it was not near full of gas, the lower part being empty and flaccid, leaving a large amount of room for expansion. I had been for some time in the Aoud, expecting momentarily to conic out at the top in the sunshine, and when I had reached apparently the greatest altitude, I was surprised to iiot-ke electrical discharges right in my vicinity, not mere flashes, _but discharges. The air about theb dloon became seeminglyattenuated and the gas- in the balloon expanded, filling it out to the utmost tension and forcing a volume of gas down through the neck of the balloon, discharging upon my head. At the same time the balloon was rocking backward and forward with great violence and going at the same time with almost cannon-ball velocity in the center of the storm. A collapse of the vapor of the cloud had evidently taken place and the balloon was rushing toward that vacuum. I tied the rope to my waist and leaned "forward to escape the discharging gas and get my breath. All this time I was holding the valve wide open (the Opening in the top of the oalloon was fully a foot in diameter) and continued doing so until almost all the gas was gone. The wind was so violent it seemed that if there had been no gas at all in the balloon it could have been handled in the same way. But at last the added weight of water to the balloon, caused by the collapses of vapor, forced me down, the balloon falling through the cloud after that quietly enough. I then learned for the first time by practical experience that a thunder storm is not where it looks the blackest, but where it is the lightest, and that the lower uartof The. dark and rough in appearance, is really the most harmless part of the storm clotuf. You must understand that th.e gas was escaping in the storm, through ■jgnitloii’Trom the idlhlOrous charges of electricity about me.”