TREMENDOUS HAILSTORM.

Patea Mail, Volume IX, Issue 1134, 4 January 1884, Page 2

TREMENDOUS HAILSTORM.

The Ashburton correspondent of the Press writes ;—-Probably no plabc m Canterbury can compare with the districts of Alford Forest and Mount Somers for variety of and changes in climate. Recently report have come to hand of extraordinary hailstorms occurring in these districts, but the accounts now to hand seem entirely beyond credence, and were it not for the fact that my informant gives his statement in such a way as to leave no room for doubtj I should hesitate to conifnnnicate his account of a storm occurring in the Mount Somers district on Christmas Day. My informant is a shepherd in the employ -of E. G. Wright, He was in Mr Wright’s place at Gawler Downs on Christmas evening, and states that between five and six. o’clock a most severe storm passed over the district. His attention was first attracted by the falling of a hailstone as large as a bantam fowl’s egg. He was proceeding outside with the intention of picking the hailstone up, but was driven back by the tailing ot others still larger. The stones kept falling and paltering on the roof of the room occupied by the shepherd and other employes, and eight or nine holes were made through the iron ridging of the roof. The storm was not like an ordinary hailstorm, but continued for some time, and in half an hour the ground was covered with hail stones resembling solid pieces of ice, many of them being as large ns a hen’s egg. They lay on the ground several hours before melting, and wherever they fell made deep indentations.