Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 18.djvu/698

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STORM.
602
STORM.

the rate of its increase or decrease in intensity. This can only be done by a careful comparison of several successive weather maps. As these maps are made up at least twice a day and sometimes more frequently, the forecaster is in a position to say how fast the storm is moving and whether it is growing more intense or rapidly dying away.

The great irregularities in individual storm paths may be appreciated by studying the accompanying chart (Fig. 2) showing the tracks of all the centres of low pressure which passed over the United States during January, 1901. The storms in that month were unusually severe over the North Atlantic Ocean. Of the thirteen tracks that are here charted four moved with a velocity of over one thousand miles daily; one of them at a velocity of less than five hundred miles daily; and one was stationary for one day. Further details in regard to these storms are given in the text of the Monthly Weather Review for the month in question. More than one-half of the cyclonic storms that pass over the United States have been developed somewhere in the Pacific Ocean. Perhaps one-quarter originated within the United States. The others are first perceived off the coasts of the West Indies or on the Gulf of Mexico. The most severe storms are the hurricanes that begin in the tropical portion of the Atlantic, move westward and northward into the South Atlantic or Gulf States, then turn toward the northeast and disappear while still moving toward Europe. The paths pursued by general cyclonic storms are apparently determined by the so-called general circulation of the atmosphere, but are modified considerably by the formation of cloud and rain or snow attending the storm.

The most extensive condensed collection of data relative to American storms is found in the “Contributions to Meteorology,” by Professor Loomis, as revised and published in the Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, vols. iii., iv., and v. (Washington, 1885, 1887, and 1889). The details of current storm phenomena are published regularly by the Weather Bureau in the Monthly Weather Review. The physical-mathematical theories founded by Espy and Ferrel have been further developed in numerous memoirs, some of which will be found in a collection of translations published by the Smithsonian Institution in 1891. The current literature is contained in the successive volumes of the Meteorologische Zeitschrift (Berlin). A general summary of our knowledge of the mechanics of storms is given by Prof. F. H. Bigelow in his Report on International Cloud Work (Washington, 1900).

STORM, stôrm, Gustav (1845-1903). A Norwegian historian, born at Lom. He studied at Christiania, where he became professor of history in 1887. His publications, which include a large number of articles in German and Scandinavian journals, deal chiefly with early Scandinavian history. They include Sagnkredsene om Karl den Store og Didrik af Bern (1874), Kritiske bidrag til vikingetidens historie (1878), and a translation of Snorre Sturlasson's Kongesagaer (1897), on which he had previously written his Snorre Sturlassons historieskrivning (1873). He also edited the important Monumenta historica norvegica (1880). In 1900 the Norwegian Storthing appropriated twenty thousand kroner for a popular edition of Storm's Dano-Norwegian rendering of the Heimskringla, which had appeared in 1886-89.

STORM, Theodor (1817-88). A German poet and novelist, one of the great masters of that peculiarly German creation, the short story of character and sentiment. He was born at Husum, Schleswig, on September 14, 1817, studied jurisprudence at Kiel and Berlin, and, returning to Kiel in 1839, became intimate with the brothers Theodor and Tycho Mommsen, poetry being the bond of union, especially their mutual admiration for the Swabian poet Mörike. The result was the publication of the Liederbuch dreier Freunde (1843), now a great rarity, which contained Storm's first essays in poetry. For ten years he practiced law in his native town and returned to it as Landvogt in 1864, having entered the Prussian civil service in 1853, and occupied judicial offices at Potsdam and Heiligenstadt, near Göttingen. In 1880 he retired and settled at Hademarschen, in Holstein, where he died on July 4, 1888.

Storm began his literary work at Husum by collecting the popular sagas and stories of Schleswig-Holstein, then assisted Biernatzki in editing his Volksbuch, in which, besides some exquisite lyrics, his first three important stories, Martha und ihre Uhr (1848), Im Saale (1849), and Immensee (1850), saw the light. The last-named novelette, the author's most popular and perhaps also his most characteristic work, was the crowning achievement of his first period; it is the best specimen of that retrospective type of story with which Storm's name is most intimately associated, and deservedly occupies a place in the front rank of the short stories of any land or age. Through various translations it has become familiar also to English readers. Of about a dozen stories written during the eleven years of absence from his native soil, Im Sonnenschein (1854) and Angelica (1855) are sketches of by-gone days, tinged with the elegiac melancholy which forms the key-note of most of the author's stories; Im Schloss (1861) and Von jenseits des Meeres (1864) boast of happy endings, and Auf der Universität (1862) is the most ambitious story of this period, in which scenes from Storm's own student life are charmingly interwoven. Die Regentrude (1864) is the best of several delicious fairy-tales. With Storm's return to Husum in 1804 his work enters an essentially new phase, in which the passive retrospective novel gives place to a more active and dramatic form of romance. On the one hand is here to be considered a series of chronicle-novels, written in an archaic style, comprising Der Spiegel des Cyprianus (1865), a romantic tale of the Thirty Years' War, Aquix submersus (1876), Renata (1878), Zur Chronik von Grieshuus (1884), and Ein Fest auf Haderslevhuus (1885); on the other hand some artist-novels, such as Ein stiller Musikant (1874), and Psyche (1875). On psychological lines are Viola tricolor (1873), Carsten Curator (1878), John Riew (1885), Ein Bekenntnis and Der Schimmelreiter (1888). Nor should the delightful children's story Pole Poppenspäler (1874) be forgotten. Consult Schütze, Theodor Storm, sein Leben und seine Dichtung (Berlin, 1887); Wehl, Theodor Storm, ein Bild seines Lehens und Schaffens (Altona, 1888); Schmidt, Charakteristiken, I. (Berlin, 1886); Stern, Studien zur Litteratur der Gegen-