CATASTROPHE: No Green Pastures

Over the central section of North America there hung for weeks a blanket of clear hot dry air under high atmospheric pressure. Because air moves from high to low pressure areas, rainladen breezes from the two oceans were unable to penetrate beyond the rim of the U. S. The sun beat down through cloudless skies to blister the earth. Under normal circumstances low pressure areas known as "cyclonic storms" (not necessarily of "cyclonic" velocity and violence) swing periodically across the land from west to east, sucking in and mixing hot and cold...

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