A VIOLENT HAILSTORM.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume XXIII, Issue 210, 11 September 1901, Page 2

A VIOLENT HAILSTORM.

The New Zealand Times special correspondent at Napier reports that an extraordinary hailstorm burst) over Pukehou, neßr Te Aute, on Friday afternoon, being the heaviest within the memory of the oldest resident. The occurrence was all the more strange beiau;e it was confined to a very small, aiva, and was experienced in no other: portion of ihe dis'rict, which at the time was enjoying fine weather, i An eye-witness states that at 250 p.m. an oppressive stillness reigned, I there being a bank of dark, leaden c'ouds in the south-west sky. After a few warning drops, the storm burst' with startling suddenness, rain des- j cending in tropical torrents, accompanied by thrashing sheets of hail, vivid flashes of lightning and crashing peals of thunder. In about twenty minutes the hitherto limpid streams in the neighbourhood were transformed into angry torrents 1 , and limbs of trees were carried down with irresistible force. A creek flowing between Archdeacon Wiliiams's residence and Te Aute College, which, under normal conditions, is Of (j tu 8f c wide, rose about Bft in the course of a few minutes, and where it crosses the public road it was spread out for fully a quarter of a mile. The paddocks presented the appearance of a heavy fall of snow having taken place. Fences were buried in bail drifts, and in one locality the hail was banked up to a height of Bft. The occurrence was confined in such narrow limits that half a mile from the station gate no hail fell at all. The creek appears to have been denuded of eels and carp, hundreds of which wire Strewn over the paddocks. An inch and a half of rain fell in the twenty minutes, exclusive of the hail.