In the
geographical distribution of storms, the Peruvian coast, which is not
visited by thunder or lightning, presents the most striking contrast to the
rest of the tropical zone, in which, at certain seasons of the year,
thunder-storms occur almost daily, about four or five hours after the sun
has reached the meridian. According to the abundant evidence collected by
Arago* from the testiimony of navigators (Scoresby, Parry, Ross, and
Franklin), there can be no doubt that, in general, electric explosions are
extremely rare in high northern regions (between 70 degrees and 75 degrees
latitude).
[footnote] *Arago, op. cit., p. 388-391. The learned academician Von Baer,
who has done so much for the meteorology of Northern Asia, has not taken
into consideration the extreme rarity of storms in Iceland and Greenland; he
has only remarked ('Bulletin de l'Academie de St. Petersbourg', 1839, Mai)
that in Nova Zembla and Spitzbergen it is sometimes heard to thunder.
'The meteorological portion' of the descriptive history of nature which we
are now concluding shows that the processes of the absorption of light, the
liberation of heat, and the variations in the elastic and electric tension,
and in the hygrometric condition of the vast aerial ocean, are all so
intimately connected together, that each individual meteorological process
is modified by the action of all the others.
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