Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. CLIMATE CONTINUED. Moisture And Rainfall. Abundance of Moisture—The Rainy Season—Decrease Towards the West —Vapor in the Atmosphere—Rain- Charts and their Explanation—Exceptional Conditions of Rainfall in the Niobrara Region and its Cause—Comparative Estimates with Europe. T ASTERN Nebraska has an abundance of moisture. This may 1 j appear like an exaggeration to those who were educated to be- lievethat Nebraska was an arid region. And yet there is nothing in the natural history of the State better established than that there is here an abundance of rainfall. When the snows of winter disappear the ground is in good condition to be worked. Sufficient showers come during early spring to excite the crops of cereal grains, grasses and corn to an active growth. Sometimes it is comparatively dry between the spring showers and the June rains. These come sometimes earlier than June—in the last of May, and sometimes not till the last of June and constitute the rainy season for the State. It begins whenever the "big rise" of the Missouri and the Platte occur. This rainy season lasts from four to eight weeks. In fifteen years I have not known it to fail. During its continuance it does not indeed rain every day, except occasionally for a short period. Generally during, this period it rains from two to three times a week. It is more apt to rain every night than every day. In fact during the whole of this season three-fourths of the rain falls at night. It is not an unusual occurrence for rain to fall every night for weeks, followed by cloudless days. This rainy season of June occurs at a period when crops most need rain, and owing to the regularity of its occurrence, drouths sufficiently severe to destroy the crops in. eastern Nebraska, where there is proper cultiva...