New Britain Herald Newspaper, October 14, 1924, Page 16

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DL RN b e V3N VNS A a0 P 4 NS it LS, ¥ HANDRIS B A R A S P 15 tornado of re- ck our Southern States a few week ying $10,- 000,000 worth of ‘property, killing more taan 100 persons and seripusly injuring about fve times that many, was not one “eyel twister” merely, but several. It was a most appalling combination. The first one appears to have started f ansas-Tennessee line, trav- the southwest corner of he northeast corner of opi into Alabama, and thence Georgia and South Carolina, In ake it left 1000 miles of desolation ng a track a few hun- T'IT, most cent years, wh ago, dest her and almost simul- adoes, each following a path of its Louisiana and North Car- olina <uficrad. Two of them actually ! Hill, S. C., where seventy- aught in a school- as torn to pieces, four were rely or largely de- ive b yed, s being twisted as if by ieve were the usual freak occur- 4y teristic of tornadoes. At zs, Ala., a child was hurled le and killed. In another nee a five-month-old infant was insta picked tp out of its crib, whirled out of a window and deposited unhurt in a field 100 yar At Opelika, Ala., a man was picked up which he lay, and a imd himself in the road ween the covers and un- and pigs were carried rh the air; chickens of feathers; wells work must s a be almost impos- v nsion. The United States W r Bureau says that there s no artificial structure on the face Jf the less possibly the pyr- E would not be de- of a tornado. ruck St. Louis in Idings to pieces v a had been so much lath and plaster. At Grinnell, Ia., a ed to complete ruin in seconds a solid edifice of used for c school. struck “shaped persons The Louisville in like a t in the w Tornadoe Valley 1 and t westert greenish t nado sk sort downwa gigantic 1, ard the ground of 9 ief These ce has but swers familiar with nder the summertime to frighten st commonly e air near the sur- s ; s well warmed. A 1 s over the top of thi} tum. But the cool the warm air, neath the lat- struggle 2 thunder- it energy is de f vapor goes sweel an appalling electrical ditplay. The revolving cloud is perhaps 1000 feet in diameter where it touches the earth. Nobody knows how fast it whirls, but the ra}e of its gyration cer- tainly exceeds 500 an hour, ye-witnesses have said that the funnel cloud looks like an elephant’s trunk, enor- mou: exaggerated, feeling its way along, and sucking up what- ever it comes across. Building in its path are often demolished as if by an explosive force from within, throwing the roofs off and the walls outward. This strange phenomenon notably char- acterized the great St. Louis tornado, which mowed a swath through the city, doing $12,000,000 worth of damage in a few minutes. Hundréds of houses blew up. Why should such a thing happen? The explanation reveals one of the most remarkable of the tornado’s pecularities. Inside ef the whirling mass of vapor is a vacuum. When it strikes a house, all of the air surrounding the latter is sucked up, whereupon the pressure of the air inside the building blows it to pieces. ! Tornadoes usually travel from south- west to northeast; therefore, if seeking to escape the monster, one should run to nerth or south, and never to east or northdwst. If it is only a mile away and coming directly toward the observer, he has just one minute to get out of the way. If he does not start wrong, the chances arne that he will win to safety. The destructive path of a tornado is usually not more than 800 yards wide. People have stood within fifty yards of passing funnel clouds, on the north side which is the safe side), without being seriously incommoded. On the other foolish persons have actually t such clouds by running n front of them. It does not pay to monkey with a cyclone twister. A Kansas man, in a hurry to deliver me lumber, tried to drive his team s the path of a tornado, thinking at he could get over in time. It a bad mistake. He and his horses were killed and horribly mangled, the educed to a wreck and the a5 scattered over several of territory in the shape of 00d. loud, drinking all the reely distributes to are mud so tenacious 1 not wash to be scraped off. the tornado is on occa- t are almost dainty. e instance the trim- ming was ripped off a wom dress as neatly as if it had been done by hand In another recorded case a carpet which had been securely tacked to a floor was taken up and carried out of the house without being torn. But the monster is gentle only for amusement’s sake appar- ently. Women's hair is sometimes torn from their heads and twisted into ropes A freak performance credited to one tornado was the driving of a piece of scantling seven feet long and six inches square lengthwise through the body of a hog. A little boy whose father and mother Like a funnel, with the small end toward the earth, a tornado moves rapidly, sometimes at the rate of eighty or more miles an hour. Inside is a vacuum, and the effect is a tre- mendous sucking fotce, which even the strongest building in the world cannot withstand. Fires frequently follow a cyclone in conspiracy of destruction Recent Storm That Wrought Havoc in Many " Southern States Another Sample of the Terrible Destructive Force of This Most Violent Form of All Nature’s —___ Phenomena were killed in the Sherman, Tex., “cyclone” told how it happened. “Papa and mamma and all of us were on the bed when it struck the house. I saw sister taken up to the ceiling twice and dropped back to the bed. Then it seemed like the house exploded.” It is a mistake to suppose that our Northéastern States are exempt from tornadoes. New Jersey is rather subject to such whirling storms, and so also are Maryland and Massachusetts. No sec- tion of the country can be regarded as immune, though a mountain range to the west serves as an effective protection for any district thus defended. In that respect the cities of New York, Philadel- phia and Boston are fortunate, being walled against cyclone twisters by the Orange Mountains, the Blue Ridge and the Berkshire Hills. Tornadoes never come from the East. HE only obstacle that will break the force of a ternado is a mourtain range. When the funnel-shaped monster strikes a mountain ridge, it cannot go through it, and is deflected upward, the currests that compose it becoming sep- arated and finishing their struggle far above the earth, wbere they can do no harm. When the cold air from aboye invades the warm air beneath on a hot and sultry day it produces a sudden condensation of moisture which cguses electric dis- charges of great violence. Thus it comes about that one of the most appalling phenomena in connection with a tornado is of this character. On the evening when the great funnel cloud tore its way through St. Louis the electrical display was of extraordinary brilliance, the whole sky to the north and west being a continuous blaze, against which vivid forked flashes of red, purple and blue appeared. All the street lights went out, leaving the town in a darkness which was illuminated only by lightning and huge balls of electric fire playing about the streets. On the following day a tornado struck Pennsylvania, starting in the neighbor hood of Columbia at 1:30 P"M. Describ ing it, an eyewitness said: “I beheld a black cloud of funnel shape that seemed about to leap into the river. Then began the most appalling spectacle I have ever seep. Whirling round and round with a whirring noise, it shot upward, and be- Copve 924, oy Public Ledger Complny orn A spade, picked up by a hurricane, was thrown into the trunk of a tree so hard the blade pen- etrated the hard wood for several inches PP adoes Dol The pranks played by the wind are sometimes almost unbeliev- able. For instance, more than half of this house was sheared off and carried away by a tor- nado whieh did not disturb even the furniture in the part of the dwelling left neath it T beheld the air filled with flying objects. The huge black mass appeared to be coming directly toward me, but, on reaching the railroad,-it took a south- westerly course and continued on, leaving desolation in its wake.” The roar of the funnel cloud as it travels along seems to be one of its most terrifying manifestations. It has been described as a combined whir-r-r-r and Ww00-00-00, but with such a magnitude of sound as to be deafening. The Weather Bureau says#“No other type of storm, even remotely approaches the tornado in violence.” | The most ter- rific tropical hurricane is a zephyr in comparison. People who have read in the newspapers about the recent at- mospheric cataclysm in the South cAnnot in the least realize the horrors which it has involved. A fact worth mentioning in this con- nection is that a “waterspout” at sea is exactly the same thing as a tornado on land. In occasional instances ships have been overwhelmed and sunk by water- spouts, but’ such occurrences have been happily rare. A “twister” like 2 giant’s finger gives the scenery a general stirring up as it swoops across ho count~vside or plows through a town

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