The Home Front:
BOHN, WILLIAM E.
THE HOME FRONT Let's Have Respect For the Weather By William E. Bohn DURING these keen, clear days of autumn, ever since 1792, the Old Farmer's Almanac has been coming round. Among other things,...
...Among other things, it has served to teach us modesty...
...The canker worms scarcely made their appearance this spring...
...This Old Farmer's Almanac naturally centers our attention upon New England...
...But all of us who live in Western Europe or North America have learned through the ages to think of Nature with careless disrespect...
...We read about floods, droughts, earthquakes and typhoons, but we take it for granted that these things happen to other people--especially differently colored people, lower-class people who don't amount to much anyway...
...The revolutions of the heavenly bodies, the long-term cyclical changes which seem to be slowly transforming the earth, even the weather, which furnishes us our staple conversation from day to day--all these things are beyond our control...
...June 6th: Extreme cold with high winds, freezes the ground at night...
...Editor Bob does his best to make us shudder...
...August 2nd: Winter rye scarcely fit to reap...
...10th: Indian corn scarcely fit to weed...
...In the 1955 Old Farmer's Almanac, Editor Bob Sagendorf reprints a paragraph of notes on the "cold summer of 1816" which was published in the edition of 1817: "May 29th: Cold and backward, very little feed for cattle...
...And then, by an amazing feat of journalistic enterprise, our editor includes a description of Carol, the third of the 1954 series of eight great storms...
...But one glance at the tables according to which the sun and moon, the tides and seasons function is enough to show us that all our activities are carried on within the framework of conditions which we are helpless to change...
...The Almanac also records the Massachusetts tornado of June 9, 1953...
...But even a cursory reading of this old New England almanac will teach us the fallacy of this slipshod view Lots of astounding things have happened in this theoretically mild climate...
...He speaks of 40 dead, 1,500 injured and $500 million in damages...
...That is a good thing to contemplate...
...But, even in that limited area of this so-called Temperate Zone, we have had some horrifying tales of death and destruction by hurricane and cyclone since the first colonists landed...
...I have often wondered why no one ever makes anything of the year 1816...
...But they have no notion that this sort of thing might happen again...
...He suggests that the unhappy summer of Madison's administration was due to the great earthquake in the East Indian archipelago on April 5, 1815...
...The first one of which I have seen a record struck in 1635...
...The famous waterspout which wrought such havoc off Martha's Vineyard occurred in 1896...
...These unemotional jottings give no idea of the suffering of humans and animals during this strange summer and the ensuing winter...
...Some of them died of hunger...
...With our great cities, highways and airlines, we tend to think that our gadgets dominate the world, that they can function independently of winter or summer, heat or cold, wind or weather...
...This is, after all, the Temperate Zone...
...It struck on August 31...
...Some of us may have been slightly disturbed by the fact that eight hurricanes came driving up from the Caribbean recently...
...And never, never will it leave us unfed...
...All of them were uncomfortable...
...9th: Continues cold with a sharp frost at night which cuts beans and other tender plants to the ground...
...Next came the famous hurricane of 1938, which most New Yorkers will recall for the destruction which it left behind on Long Island...
...In their minds, it was just a freak of an otherwise easy-going and well-intentioned system...
...Even in my cozy little state of Delaware, where most of us are individualistic Republicans, many chicken farmers had their establishments so dismantled that they are calling upon the Federal Government to lend them money to go back into business...
...Another great storm did its damage in 1815...
...If that quake, says Bob, could produce the summer of 1816, the bombs of our day may produce its counterpart...
...Anyone who has sat on into the night, as I did, while Hazel moaned that strange, eerie moan and great trees crashed will agree with me that we should treat our weather with more respect...
...28th: High winds, cool, some frost...
...Our weather may tantalize us now and then, but in the long run it never gets too hot or too cold, too wet or too dry...
...July 26th: Grass light and backward--people just beginning to hay...
...This catastrophe is said to have extended over 1,000 square miles and to have obscured the sun for twelve days...
...We take for granted the kindness of forces which in other quarters of the globe lay waste the earth...
...And what happened in 1816 might happen in 1955 or 1956...
...They prayed, protested and complained, but it did no good...
...It made impression enough upon the people who went through it...
...When the figures piled up by the unpleasant Hazel are added to these, the total losses from storms in New England this season must be enormous...
Vol. 37 • November 1954 • No. 47
