Clark
(Meteorologist)
Fri Jan 06 2006 12:41 AM
An old definition for a hurricane

I came across the following while taking part in a brief scavenger hunt online. It is from a collection maintained by the Univ. of Oklahoma out of a book entitled "TORNADOES: What they are and how to observe them; with practical suggestions for the protection of life and property" written by someone in the Signal Corps of the US Army in 1877. There is a brief section on hurricanes inside the book on pages 13 and 14, linked below. Needless to say, their definition of a hurricane matches ours today in just one fashion -- high wind speeds. Just another example of how things sometimes do change in this field...

Page 13: http://hsci.cas.ou.edu/images/jpg-100dpi-10in/19thCentury/Finley/1887/Finley-1887-013.jpg
Page 14: http://hsci.cas.ou.edu/images/jpg-100dpi-10in/19thCentury/Finley/1887/Finley-1887-014.jpg


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