Abstract
IN a paper recently published in the Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, Mr. S. A. Hill describes certain severe hail-storms and tornadoes that occurred on April 30 and May 1, 1888, in the Gangetic doab and Rohilkand in Northern India.1 Tornadoes are not very common in India, but they appear to have been somewhat more prevalent than usual in the spring of 1888, the storms in question having been preceded on April 7 by a very destructive tornado at Dacca in Bengal, a full description of which was given by Mr. Pedler and Dr. Crombie in a previous number of the Society's Journal. Like all previously recorded storms of this character, these occurred in the spring, when the seat of minimum pressure is established in the Lower Punjab, and a trough of low pressure extends from this region eastward to the Gangetic plain . To the south of this trough very dry west winds, the hot winds of Northern India, prevailed in Rajputana and Central India, while, to the north of it, damp easterly winds blew up the northern margin of the plain and across the outer slopes of the Himalaya. It is apparently in the meeting of these two winds, where the former blows in an upper, the latter in the lower, stratum, that are generated the thunder squalls that form a normal feature of the spring months in Northern India; and tornadoes, as Prof. Ferrel has shown, are merely an exaggerated development of the thunder squall. In the present instance, ordinary storms of this character, and dust storms, occurred pretty generally over all the north-western districts of the North-West Provinces, simultaneously with the tornadoes in Rohilkand and the Gangetic doab.
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Hail-Storms in Northern India. Nature 41, 236–237 (1890). https://doi.org/10.1038/041236a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/041236a0