THE POWER OF A CYCLONE

Seventh-Day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Thursday, June 10, 1880

FromThe Advent Review and Sabbath Herald, Vol. 55, No. 24

THE POWER OF A CYCLONE.

In discussing the two cyclones which visited the Bay of Bengal in October, 1876, Mr. Elliott, meteorological reporter to the government of Bengal, incidentally gives some idea of the cyclonic forces which are developed by such storms. The average “daily evaporation” registered by the Bengal instruments in October is “two inches.” The amount of heat absorbed by the conversion of this amount of water daily over so large an area as the Bay of Bengal, is enormous. “Roughly estimated,” said Mr. Elliott, “it is equal to the continuous working power of 300,000 steam engines of 1,000-horse power.” A simple calculation will show that it suffices to raise aloft 45,000 cubic feet of water in twenty-four hours from every square mile of the bosom of the bay and transport it to the clouds which overhang it. When we extend the calculation from a single square mile to the area of this whole Indian Gulf, the mind is lost in the effort to conceive the force which, in a day's time, can lift 50,000,000 tons! Yet it would be easy to show that such figures, fabulous as they seem, do not adequately represent the cyclonic force of a single storm.—London Times.