p. 101 | REMARKABLE WHIRLWIND

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Mar 30, 1876

REMARKABLE WHIRLWIND.

A terrible visitation at Hazel Green, Wis., on the 10th of March last, is described in a special dispatch to the Chicago Tribune as the result of a collision between two sections of a cloud, which had divided and come together again:—

The clouds joined, and a long cylindrical shaft shot down. The cylinder was about 120 feet in circumference and 70 feet in height. It struck the ground a mile southwest of Hazel Green, and, ploughing a furrow 600 feet long, 4 feet wide, and several feet deep, seemed to absorb the earth and the rocks. As it moved along in a northeasterly direction, it looked like a clay-colored column whirling with incredible speed around a central vacuum. It was a solid mass of heavy rubbish. As the cylinder came up the slope, the rush and yell and whirr of the column—sounding like the rush and shrieks of the wind on the sea, and like the thunder of guns—attracted the attention of the people of Hazel Green, and they flocked to their doors and windows. Steadily it came on, sometimes bounding fifty feet into the air, then rushing down again. In two minutes it descended on the little hazel grove just southwest of the town. The trees were snatched up by the roots, whirled ninety feet into the air, and supported there.

The cap of the column was a stone 8 feet long, 4 feet wide, and 3 feet thick. This stone was held in its position while the column covered a space of three quarters of a mile. Just between the grove and the town, 250 feet from either, the column halted and spun around over a small space, and then recommenced its march. The air was filled with the yells and lamentations of the people.

Tearing off a corner of a frame house, the column rose some thirty feet into the air, and then, hovering for an instant, fell perpendicularly upon the roof of the Masonic Hall, a stone building. The structure was mashed flat. This was at half past four, and a meeting had been called for five o’clock. Half an hour later seventy persons would have been assembled in the upper portion of the building. The next house was of frame, and occupied by Mrs. Richards and her family. A daughter-in-law and her two children were saved by the scantlings above them, while the rest of the family were killed outright. A frying pan containing three cakes, was on the stove, and the frying pan, still containing the cakes, was found a mile and a half northeast of the village. Twenty-six houses were carried beyond the ken of mortals. Where they went, no one can tell. The track of the column is filled with sawdust and bits of wood, as though a saw-mill had belched out a half-finished lumber yard. The trees for several miles are filled with chairs, bits of furniture, carpets, clothing, bits of window shades, and household materials. Mrs. Looney was sitting in her kitchen. The house disappeared as if touched by the magician’s wand, and the crushed body of Mrs. Looney was found 400 feet off, stripped of clothing and with the skin peeled off her back from her neck down.

Of the rest of those killed nothing can be said, beyond that the bodies were found not less than 200 feet from where they started. A boy and girl were found out on the prairie, wandering about helplessly. They were in a house of which no account has been received. They remember being lifted into the air, and, when found, were nearly a quarter of a mile from where the house used to be, badly bruised and unable to account for their condition. Probably the most remarkable spectacle was that of Dr. Kittoe’s horses, which, with barn, buggy, and harness, were lifted 60 feet into the air, and the horses dropped at least 100 rods from the former site of the barn. The column was then a huge mass of debris, and a spectator says that the horses went up through the center of the column, whirling around so swiftly that they looked as if torn in pieces. They were found utterly unbruised but stone dead, and not more than 10 or 20 feet apart. The whole affair was over in two minutes, but the devastation was most complete.—Scientific American.