TERRIFIC HAILSTORM.

Temuka Leader, Issue 1856, 21 February 1889, Page 4

TERRIFIC HAILSTORM.

During the recent storms in New South Wales hail stones as big as tea cups are said to have fallen. A resident of Bowraville, about twentymiles Nambucca Heads, and 257 miles north ot Sydney, writing lo a relative at New York, gives the following account of the storm on the Nambucca Biver:—“ I will try to describe to you a remarkable storm, or hurricane if you like, that visited us last Friday about midday. No one up here has ever seen a storm to equal it, and I certainly have never seen anything like it, especially in the immense size of the hailstones, or, more properly, blocks of ice, that came with the storm. The storm came from the south-west, and for about a quarter of an hour before the sky was immensely black in that quarter. The first notice of its approach was the roaring of the wind, which we could hear for fully ten minutes before it reached us in its fury. The force of the wind was terrific while it lasted, which fortunately was not more than twentyfive minuter. Hugo trees were snapped off or torn up by the roots and carried to some distance. The thunder and lightning lasted the whole evening; indeed, there seemed to be a succession of thunderstorms; the lightning was grand, and the thunder would frighten any one, but the chief features of the storm was the hailstones. At Bowra we got a great many larger lhan a large hen egg, and next door to us they went clean through the iron roof into the kitchen. In another part of the district they were much larger and almost square in shape—some of them as big as teacups. Mr Mackay’s house in that part is just riddled with holes. I need hardly say that such a storm has done great damage to the crops; the corn just tasselling, and now much of it is levelled to the ground. The roads are blocked with fallen trees in all directions. A man might just as well take his chance on a battle field as be in the forest here while such a storm is raging and large trees and limbs falling around him. Since this storm we have had a thunderstorm every day.”