Your affectionate friend and humble servant,
_On the North-East Storms in North America._
Agreeable to your request, I send you my reasons for thinking that our north-east storms in North America begin first, in point of time, in the south-west parts: that is to say, the air in Georgia, the farthest of our colonies to the south-west, begins to move south-westerly before the air of Carolina, which is the next colony north-eastward; the air of Carolina has the same motion before the air of Virginia, which lies still more north-eastward; and so on north-easterly through Pensylvania, New-York, New-England, &c. quite to Newfoundland.
These north-east storms are generally very violent, continue sometimes two or three days, and often do considerable damage in the harbours along the coast. They are attended with thick clouds and rain.
What first gave me this idea, was the following circumstance. About twenty years ago, a few more or less, I cannot from my memory be certain, we were to have an eclipse of the moon at Philadelphia, on a Friday evening, about nine o'clock. I intended to observe it, but was prevented by a north-east storm, which came on about seven, with thick clouds as usual, that quite obscured the whole hemisphere. Yet when the post brought us the Boston news-paper, giving an account of the effects of the same storm in those parts, I found the beginning of the eclipse had been well observed there, though Boston lies N. E. of Philadelphia about four hundred miles. This puzzled me, because the storm began with us so soon as to prevent any observation, and being a north-east storm, I imagined it must have begun rather sooner in places farther to the north-east-ward than it did at Philadelphia. I therefore mentioned it in a letter to my brother, who lived at Boston; and he informed me the storm did not begin with them till near eleven o'clock, so that they had a good observation of the eclipse: and upon comparing all the other accounts I received from the several colonies, of the time of beginning of the same storm, and since that of other storms of the same kind, I found the beginning to be always later the farther north-eastward. I have not my notes with me here in England, and cannot, from memory, say the proportion of time to distance, but I think it is about an hour to every hundred miles.