Tail End Of Tornado Strikes

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 12, Issue 87, 27 August 1948, Page 4

Tail End Of Tornado Strikes

WHAKATANE WEST & NUKUHOU NORTH Some of the country districts around Whakatane got what is believed to be the tail end of the Hamilton tornado on Wednesday afternoon. It seems to have come in from the direction of Matata, struck briefly at Whakatane West, and “bounced” to Nukuhou North. Property damage is not severe, heaviest loser so far reported being Mr B. S. Mottram, Nukuhou North. Mr Mottram was driving his tractor, with a heavy trailer attached, up to his implement shed when he experienced a strange hush. Then he heard it coming, stopped the tractor, and braced himself. Momentarily, it knocked the breath out of him. When he “came to” a minute later, there was no shed, but sheets of iron from it drifted free and far as high as 300 feet. Later, he found some of the pieces half a mile avyuy. The heavy trailer behind the tractor was overturned. The homestead got it, too. All the front windows were blown in, and the roof of the verandah room, in which two children were sleeping at the time, was torn off. No-one was hurt. The path of the tornado could be followed across the farm by the trail of damage it left in its wake. Trees were snapped from their butts, fences and gates were carried away. Telephone lines broken and tangled, poles awry. No other serious property damage has been reported from that locality, which seems to have caught a

later and stronger manifestation of what struck Whakatane West earlier in the afternoon. Mr C. S. Butler’s farm, Whakatane West, was in the “line of fire”. His first intimation tlfat something was amiss was an ominous hush, like that eerie stillness that precedes an earthquake. Then he saw the iron roof of a neighbour’s haystack whisked away, scattering pieces to a distance of 150 yards. Trees on his own property, some with butts up to 18 inches thick, were twisted off their bases like britr tie sticks. Old honeysuckles bent like bows before the force of the tornado that passed within two tense minutes. Fortunately, it missed the house, but carried away a line full of an employee’s washing. In the same locality, . the wind flattened a row of young but wellgrown pines and gums on Mr B. McGillam’s property as though they had been a swathe of wheat before a giant scythe. Again, they seemed to have been twisted off.