The Weather of 1870

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jan 3, 1871

The Weather of 1870.

Among the many remarkable things of the past remarkable year, its meteorological phenomena are worthy of prominent mention. A person who has not been particularly observant in this direction, will be surprised at the number and striking character of these abnormal exhibitions of nature. A long article by Eld. D. T. Taylor, in the Boston Journal of Dec. 17, 1870, sets forth many interesting particulars on this subject. Not having room for the article entire, we glean from it the following facts.

The order of nature has seemed to be in a great degree reversed; usually warm regions being remarkably cold, and cold ones warm. The winter on land was extremely mild; on the ocean as unusually severe. In January, dustmen swept the streets of Boston and New York. In Washington Territory, twenty-two varieties of flowers were gathered from an open garden. There was no snow from Massachusetts to Missouri. The country around Boston was plowed. Violets bloomed in some parts of New England. Flowers blossomed, and peas were two inches above ground, on Long Island. The papers pronounced it “June in January;” and the season was declared to be “the strangest in many years.” An examination of the records showed that January was eight degrees warmer than any previous one for forty-six years.

In February, in Norwich, Ct., the green buds of the magnolia were an inch long, the 5th of the month, and Japan quinces began to open their blossoms. The 16th, a dahlia was seen in full blossom at Scranton, Pa., a rosebush full of buds at Easton, dandelions at Allentown, and grasshoppers in the field at Bethlehem. March 1 brought early radishes to the market at Alton, Ill., and April shone like May. Such was the climate all along between the parallels of 39° to 44°. This winter in our own country which appeared to be no winter, was declared on all hands to be abnormal, unaccountable, and long to be remembered.

On the other hand, all over the ocean, the winter was unusually cold. Germany experienced the frigid climate of St. Petersburgh. Southward the cold prevailed unwontedly. Northern Africa felt it severely. Ice in the harbor of Brindisi, and frozen orange trees at Corfu, proclaimed it. The usual winter rains did not fall; a drought prevailed in Northern Africa, Egypt, and Syria; and the inhabitants were in despair at the novel phenomenon of their sunny clime being turned into a region of frost.

The summer followed, hotter than any preceding summer for over a hundred years. Drouths were the order of the day in all the country from the Atlantic to the Mississippi. In Canada, the whole country became dry as tinder, and then experienced the ravages of a fire, such as no man living ever witnessed. The conflagration swept over and ruined twenty-four hundred square miles of the country between Prescott and Ottawa. A conductor between Providence, R. I., and Worcester, Mass., asserts that for five consecutive months his cars were not wet by rain.

In July and August, the heat became frightful. The mercury had, in June, for many successive days, gone up above 100°. The wind felt as if coming from a land of fire. Roads became dust heaps, and many mills stopped for want of water. July 17, the mercury rose to 129° Fahrenheit. Hundreds of horses and men went down before the heat, struck dead as with the blast of the simoon. The heated term, usually short and sharp, was this year long and almost unendurable. The mortality of the city of New York, during these six burning weeks, reached the sum of 5832—one-fifth the average mortality of the whole year, crowded into forty-two days! July 22, in New York, forty-eight cases of sunstroke, nineteen, fatal. July 23, thirty-three deaths from the same cause; while the numbers thus struck down all over the land must be estimated by thousands. August 14, a hot wind passed over a four-acre field of cotton in Pomaria, South Carolina, and blasted it white and dead in a few hours. Prof. E. Loomis found from the records at Newport, R. I., that the four months of June, July, August, and September, averaged hotter than in any year since 1763, a period of one hundred and eight years.

In Europe the heat was equally phenomenal, producing severe drought everywhere, and in some countries threatening famine. Crimson auroras were witnessed in their rarest grandeur as far south as Florence and Rome, producing alarm and being regarded as ominous of coming evil.

The thermometrical ranges have been sudden and enormous. Sometimes the north winds have blown with great chilliness; and in an hour the wind changing into the south would feel as if wafted from a torrid clime. Everywhere, the seasons seemed to be mixed up in inextricable confusion. In Champlain, N. Y., where there never was a tornado before, three of these visitations have been experienced, with one hurricane, and three earthquake shocks. And while on the 3d of November a warm but furious rain storm occurred, accompanied with high wind, loud thunder, and lightning which struck in a dozen places in New England, only ten days later, there being no snow in the North except on the mountain tops, a snow-storm fell over Virginia, and ice formed in New Orleans.

Meanwhile the papers have been full of articles headed, “Trouble in the Sun,” “Solar Spots,” “The Earth in Trouble,” “Nature Witnessing for God,” “Is the Solar System in Danger?” “The Coming Storm,” &c., &c. Every one seems to be looking for coming wonders, but none seem to know what is coming. Who can explain all these irregularities in the realm of nature?