Rensselaer Republican, Volume 27, Number 44, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 9 July 1896 — DYNAMITE FOR TORNADOES. [ARTICLE]

DYNAMITE FOR TORNADOES.

How a Government Scientist Would Destroy Death Dealing Clouds. “Fifty years a. big .town in the Southwest will be without a tornado trap.” said I’ruf. 11. weather bureau, the other day. “The time has arrived when serious attention must be given to finding means of defense against these .whirling storms. As the socalled cyclojieifbelt becomes more thickly populated, disasters from this cause will grow more frequent. My belief is that any town in that region would be rendered safe against tornadoes by a scries of lookout stations extended in a line from north to south,-so as to interpose a barrier on the danger side—i. e., the west side, from which the revolving storm invariably comes. This barrier would be made effective by means of a system of dynamite bombs connected with the stations by wires. It would not be necessary to keep guard all the Jime, but the men appointed for the purpose would only go on duty when warning was received from the weather bureau that conditions were favorable for ‘cyclones.’ On seeing a funnel cloud approaching the operator would simply wait until it got near enough and then touch off the cartridge which would blow it to smithereens. “What reason is there for doubting that such a method would be successful? Do we not know that .waterspouts at sea are sometimes dissipated and' reduced to harmlessness by the firing of guns from threatened ships? A waterspout is nothing more nor loss than a marine tornado. Occasionally they have been seen to s run upon the land and transform themselves into ‘cyclones.’ If the tornado were not destroyed by the dynamite explosions, it would be likely to be deprived of so much of its energy as to bo rendered incapable of doing harm. The cost of maintaining such systems of defense throughout the cyclone belt would not amount in 500 years to the $10,000,000, which the reeeht calamity is said to have cost St. Louis. “Money ought to be appropriated by Congress for studying this strange and little understood phenomenon. It is most important that we should learn about the mechanism of the tornado—a meteorological disturbance capable of destroying $lO,000,000 worth of property in ten minutes. All we know at present is that the energy of the ‘cyclone’ must be electrical. In no other way could the destruction caused by it be accounted for. It is always accompanied by a severe thunder storm. The weather bureau report says that during the St. Louis tornado the ‘electric display was exceeding brilliant, the whole west find northwest sky being an almost continuous blaze of light. Intensely vivid flashes Of forked lightning wCrc outlined in green, blue and bright yellow against the duller background of never-eensing sheet lightning.’ Evidently, then, it is necessary that we should find some means of dissipating the electricity with which the destructive funnel cloud is charged."