THE WEATHER WE ALWAYS HAVE WITH US
Visitors to Paradise Valley on the Fourth of July spent the day
wrapped in overcoats, (when not wrapped about a stove), throughout the
fog-long day. Visitors of July Fifth enjoyed, lightly clad, "The kind
and famous sunshine". Nevertheless, Uncle Sam's weather observer, who
climbs the tower near Paradise Camp and looks wisely at the thermometers
every afternoons, states that the maximum temperature on the Glorious
Fourth was two degrees higher than on the Fifth, fifty-seven and
fifty-five being the figures. This phenomenon finds at least a partial
explanation in the fact that the thermometers are shaded from the sun in
a latticed shelter and record the temperature of the air, while it is
the sun's direct heat that warms us, and the absence thereof that sends
us shivering to the warmth of Paradise Inn.
By. S. B. Jones-Ranger-Nat.
GLACIAL STRIAE
Just before reaching Panorama Point on the Skyline Trail one passes
close to an island of rock peeping through the snow. This rock island
is singularly devoid of flowers; a few sedges, some heather, little
more. It bears, however, some of the finest glacial striae or scratches
one could hope to see. These glacial markings are long grooves, like
the path to Heaven, straight and narrow. They are a fraction of an inch
in depth. There are scores of them, all parallel, down the surface of
the rock. Such scratches are perfect proof that the glaciers of Mount
Rainier must have at one time covered it. Small boulders carried by the
moving ice of the glacier gouged out the shallow grooves. Doubtless
similar boulders are gouging similar grooves on the bed of the present
Nisqually Glacier.
Glacial striae are found not only on Mount Rainier, and not only in
mountains, but in Minnesota, Wisconsin, New York, and New England. They
are also found in England and Scandinavia. Their existence is one of
the proofs that northern North America and Europe were once completely
covered with enormous glaciers, like the great ice sheet that covers
Greenland today.
By. S. B. Jones--Ranger Nat.
