blow warm in their season. But patience, it will come. Another
day, or two, perhaps, pass: the sun rises as usual, the thermometer has
the same range still. "Long cold snap," we exclaim; "how long will it
last?"

A change is coming, but this time it will snow. About an hour or two after
sunrise the cirrus threads are discoverable again in the west, but now
they are most numerous in the S. W. As the day passes on they thicken and
advance toward the E. N. E., the sun begins to be obscured, the
thermometer rises, and it slowly "_moderates_." There is a snow storm
approaching from the S. W.

But the thermometer rises slowly; it must get up to 26 deg. or 28 deg. before it
can snow much. I have known in one instance, at Norwalk, a considerable
fall of snow, although much mingled with hail, when the thermometer stood
at 13 deg. above zero, and one, a moderate fall, some two inches, with it at
24 deg., but these were exceptions. The snow range of the thermometer on the
parallel of 41 deg. north latitude, and south of it, is from 26 deg. to 30 deg. above
0 deg.; when colder or warmer it may snow to whiten the ground, or perhaps
barely cover it, but usually rains or hails. We have seen that in the
polar regions, according to Dr. Kane, it is about zero, but the rise of
the thermometer there, previous to the snow, was about the same as here,
_i. e._, from 15 deg. to 25 deg.. This fact is instructive. Since the foregoing
was written, and on the 7th of February, 1855, a snow-storm of
considerable length set in, with the thermometer at 5 deg., and continued more
than twenty-four hours, the thermometer gradually rising. The snow was
very fine, like that described by Arctic voyagers as falling in extreme
cold weather.

As the dense and darker portions of the storm approach, and although the
sun is obscured, and the ground frozen, it continues to moderate, and at
evening, when the thermometer is up to 28 deg., and the dense portion of the
storm has reached us, gently and in calmness the snow begins to fall.
Perhaps a light air following the storm, or the presence of the trade near
the earth, at first inclines the snow-flakes to the eastward. This is
frequently so at the commencement of snow storms. Ere long, however, the
wind rises from the N. E., and the snow is driven against the windows,
rounded and hardened by the attrition of its flakes upon each other, in
their descent through the eddying and opposite currents. The next day we
r