Word: moist
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...August, first month of the Caribbean's high-wind season, hurricanes usually trace out tracks north of Jamaica, but last week's hurricane was a little south for August. It roared straight toward Kingston. Warned by a storm tide and a hot, moist atmosphere, Kingston (pop. 250,000) battened down; buses stopped running, movies closed, people stayed home...
...Moist Magic. It will be very green, for irrigated land outproduces most land that is only "sky-watered." Desert soil has not been leached by heavy rain of its soluble plant nutrients. The sunlight keeps plants awake and growing. Most important of all, a skilled irrigator can give his plants just the right amount of water. Natural rainfall seldom does this; most seasons have wet or dry spells that check plant growth...
Turn Around. Meanwhile over New York, New Jersey and New England, the edge of the storm clashed explosively with warm moist air from the Atlantic. Howling winds of hurricane force (gusts of more than 100 m.p.h. were recorded on New York's Bear Mountain, New Hampshire's Mount Washington) drove torrential rains across hundreds of miles of coast._ Trees were uprooted, roofs ripped off, windows caved in, telephone and power lines torn down and hundreds of thousands of people left without light or heat...
...standard Wilson cloud chamber for making atomic particles visible is a rather complicated apparatus. It contains moist air and a movable diaphragm or piston to rarefy it suddenly. This action cools the air by expansion and makes it "supersaturated" with water vapor which will condense into water droplets if given proper nuclei to condense upon. Fast-moving atomic particles provide the nuclei by ionizing (electrifying) the normally neutral atoms of the air. So particles (e.g., cosmic rays from outer space) that pass through the cloud chamber become visible as thin white trails of water droplets...
...doctors also reported an indirect benefit. Moist hot packs have been the standard treatment for polio pain. Besides being messy, packs keep the nurses overworked. With the drug, nurses can spend more time on other ways of making their patients more comfortable...