TORNADO TALES

Ashburton Guardian, Volume VII, Issue 2178, 20 July 1889, Page 3

TORN ADO TALES

Whenever a great tornado ooeuri m the United Btatr», th« Meteorologloal 4 Bureau tends one or more offioers to c Inquire into and observe on the ipot the 0 effect* produced. The' 8 offioers tell aome queer thing! In their reports. For looter o«, t ta the etae of a tornado which " atruok " „ lowa' and Illinois some yeare ago. the t following wore among the "facta f ' reported :— c "A school, with Its teicbera and t eeholari, wu lifted from its atone founds- c tion and carried • dla'inee of 25 feet, the v windowi, roof, etc., being damaged, bnt t the building wos not overturned. AAti t the whole weighed tboat 30,000ibt, the a velocity of the wind must have exceeded ninety miles an hour, equal to a pressure a of nearly 421ba per iqaare foot. Hogs of 0 about three hundredweight were carried 0 aerosa a ravine and c*me to earth 300 g yards dlntant. A borse, oow, and bull B took, a flight of 200 yards, and sheep a doobls tbU distance. One bog, weighing „ 400 be ' flaw ' a mile and a quarter ; n wbilst s>belfer weighing 7001bi wa» carried f away* a&d thrut headforemost in'o the 0 »ot;|dl until her forequarters were {, barfwd. A bouse weighing twenty tens v waa wrecobed from I' a fonndatlona, and j. ploughed up the ground for a distance E of aiz feet when It was lifted over the , tops of: trees SO feet h'gb and carried 100 1 foet, still keeping entire, and only going t to pieces when it fell. This required a , preeaore of more than 71ba per square foot. 1 A granary full of grain, the total weight , of which was 60,000 ba, was forced frcm ita potation, .through an accumulation of wet straw and rubbieh, of wbioh it pushed quite ,a;pfle before it to a distance of 14 bet'- It was calculated that the pressure ntioniairrj- to do the work In this cane amounted to 234*31b8 per square foot cqml to a velocity of 216 5 miles per hour. Another granary, welgbing 55,0001b5 ( was removt d to a distance of twenty-one yards, the pressure required being 107 4'bs per square foot. One man stated that he nad been picked up by the tornado and whirled about like a topjfor a d stance of fifty F#id*f and was then brought to a •tandsvi'li against a fence. The noise, according to one person was like the dlichtrgeedf artillery, the roaring being terrific,: and resembled the souod of machine* y magnftad a million times. Some houses were blown to pieces, and the .fragments dispersed to various distances, the heaviest articles dropping out first From one farm tiro cows and thirteen hO2S were ruthlessly whipped to a distance of 100 yards, and were either killed or fatally injured. As to carte, waggona, wheel?, ploughs, sewing maobioea, stoves, maoblnery, and such •light' articles, they were merely chafE before toe wind ; some were blown away and sever found again, others were wrenched m pleoeß and scattered bitber ane* thither. Sergeant Maolntyre eatimated that ovet an area ten mile* wide the ralu fell at the raU ,of 28,^36 000 cable feet, or 1,45J,0Q0,000 lbs per minute ; while In tbe lame time the weight of tbe air rnabJng Into the vortex was 6 330,020,875 922 Sbe which moving at an aeiumed veloolty •of 130 miles an boor, represents a borae «ower of 77 689,092,161,166 1 It Is to be Sloped that our readers oan graip these {acts, and from them form sjnae Idea of ihe difference between the American tornado and the modest atormiof Britain, On* jtorma at least have the merit of dlaerimlnsting between the strong and the weak; but the tornado reoklesiiy mow* down everything, uprooting trees and picking up pins with equal ease.