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Meteorology; or Weather Explained

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<h2>CHAPTER X</h2> DECAY OF CLOUDS From the earliest ages clouds have attracted the attention of observers. Varied are their forms and colours, yet in our atmosphere there is one law in their formation. Cloud-particles are formed by the condensation of water-vapour on the dust-particles invisibly floating in the atmosphere, up to thousands—and even millions—in the cubic inch of air. But observers have not directed their attention so much to the decay of clouds—in fact, the subject is quite new. And yet how suggestive is the subject! The process of decay in clouds takes place in various ways. A careful observer may witness the gradual wasting away and dilution into thin air of even great stretches of cloud, when circumstances are favourable. In May 1896 my attention was particularly drawn to this at my manse in Strathmore. In the middle of that exceptionally sultry month, I was arrested by a remarkable transformation scene. It was the hottest May for seventy-two years, and the driest for twenty-five years. The whole parched earth was thirsting for rain. All the morning my eyes were turned to the clouds in the hope that the much-desired shower should fall. Till ten o’clock the sun was not seen, and there was no blue in the sky. Nor was there any haze or fog. But suddenly the sun shone through a thinner portion of the enveloping clouds, and, to the north, the sky began to open. As if by some magic spell there was, in a quarter of an hour, more blue to be seen than clouds. At the same time, near the horizon, a haze was forming, gradually becoming denser as time wore on. In an hour the whole clouds were gone, and the glorious orb of day dispelled the moisture to its thin-air form. This was a pointed and rapid illustration of the decay from cloud-form to haze, and then to the pure vapoury sky. It was an instance of the reverse process. As the sun cleared through, the temperature in the cloud-land rose and evaporation took place on the surface of the cloud-particles, until by an untraceable, but still a gradual process through fog, the haze was formed. Even then the heat was too great for a definite haze, and the water-vapour returned to the air, leaving the dust-particles in invisible suspension. But clouds decay in another way. This I will illustrate in the next chapter on “It always rains.” What strikes a close observer is the difference of structure in clouds which are in the process of formation and those which are in the process of decay. In the former the water-particles are much smaller and far more numerous than in the latter. While the particles in clouds in decay are large enough to be seen with the unaided eye, when they fall on a properly lighted measuring table, they are so small in clouds in rapid formation that the particles cannot be seen without the aid of a strong magnifying glass. Observers have assumed that the whole explanation of the fantastic shapes taken by clouds is founded on the process of formation; but Dr. Aitken has pointed out that ripple-marked clouds, for instance, have been clouds of decay. When what is called a cirro-stratus cloud—mackerel-like against the blue sky—is carefully observed in fine weather, it will be found that it frequently changes the ripple-marked cirrus in the process of decay to vanishing. Where the cloud is thin enough to be broken through by the clear air that is drawn in between the eddies, the ripple markings get nearer and nearer the centre, as the cloud decays. And, at last, when nearly dissolved, these markings are extended quite across the cloud. Whether, then, we consider the cases of clouds gradually melting away back into their original state of blue water-vapour, or the constant fine raining from clouds and re-formation by evaporation, or the transformation of such clouds as the cirro-stratus into the ripple-marked cirrus, we are forced to the conclusion that in clouds there is not always development, but sometimes degeneration; not always formation, but sometimes decay.     <hr style="width: 50%;" /> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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