ed storm clouds may be
moving moderately along, at the rate of twelve to fifteen or twenty miles
an hour, from about W. S. W. to E. N. E., the scud may be running under
them in a different direction--opposite, or diagonal, or both--at the rate
of twenty, fifty, sixty, and, in hurricanes, even ninety miles an hour.
You have doubtless seen these scud running from N. E. to S. W., and
without dropping any moisture, a day or sometimes two days, before the
storm coming from the S. W. reached the place where you were; and then,
sometimes the storm cloud slipped by to the southward, and the expected
storm at that point proved "a dry northeaster." Sometimes the
condensation, although sufficiently dense to influence and attract the
surface atmosphere, and create an easterly wind and scud, does not become
sufficiently dense to drop rain, and then, too, we have a dry northeaster,
which may melt away or increase to a storm after it has passed over us. _I
have never seen, except, perhaps, in a single instance, one of these
masses of scud, however dense, which had not a rain (stratus) cloud above
it, drop moisture enough to make the eaves run._ So you see it may be
true, and if you will examine carefully, you may satisfy yourself that it
is true, that the storms all move from a westerly point to the eastward,
notwithstanding the wind under them is blowing, and the scud under them
are running to the westward.

There are many other methods by which the reader may determine this matter
himself. He may catch an opportunity for a view, when there is a break in
the stratus cloud above, and the sun or moon, no longer obscured by the
_storm cloud_, shines through the scud beneath. Then he may see they are
moving in different directions. _The upper cloud, if there be any of it
left, always to the eastward._

Again, we may see the storm approach from the westward, as it often does,
before the wind commences to blow, and the scud to run from the eastward;
particularly snow storms in winter, and the gentle showers and storms of
spring.

Again, thunder storms, we know, come from the westward, and apparently
against an east wind. It is sometimes said they approach from the east,
but it is a mistake. During thirty years attentive observation in
different localities, I have never seen an instance. They sometimes _form_
over us, or just east of us, or one may form at the east and another at
the west, and as they _spread out in forming_, one may seem