A Big Hailstorm.

Feilding Star, Volume XVI, Issue 36, 11 August 1894, Page 4

A Big Hailstorm.

o Details of the hailstorm in Vienna of whicii we read in the cables recently, show that it was extremely destructive. Hailstones descended in sheets, and at the same time the wind increased to a gale, and, a waterspout burst. Driven by the I wind the hailstones were piled seve- [ ral leet deep in the streets. The i darkness, which had been relieved from time to time by vivid flashes of lightning, gradually dispersed, aud at 7 o'clock the sun shone out brilliantly, the storm, which has hai no ' parallel in Vienna since 1838, having lasted exactly 15 minutes. The temperature fell from 80 Farhenheit before the storm to 60 after it. A regular panic seized upon the entire population, and those who were in the streets were in peril ot their lives Two persons were killed —a coachman on his box, probably by lightning, and a laborer in the Prater, hy the falling of a large tree An artillery regiment at battery practice on the Simmering Heath was thrown into disorder by the horses shying and bolting, nnd several riders we r e unseated, lhe terrified horses dragged the guns over their bodies, and three officers and fourteen men were injured, five of them seriously and one fatally Other accidents also <.ccurred in different parts of the town through the same cau*e, and n great number of roofs in the old houses gave way under the weight of the masses of hailstones. The hailstones, which ranged up to the size of pigeon oggs, fell in such quant'ties and were drifted so rapidly, tbat a milk cart stuck fast in a heap of ice in one of the streets srnd had to be cut out, tbe game thing happening to some of the tramway cars, while in an opcu cellar they lay lOlt deep. As ro.ght be imagined the ci .y after the storm, looked as il it had been bombarded. If was estimated tbat out of the 30 000 houses iv Vienna, 10 000 were without, a single whole pane of ulass and nmnv others must have suffered moro or less severely, the windows in many cases being not so much smashed as perforated with clean cut round holes.