REMARKABLE THUNDER AND HAILSTORMS.
At a recent meeting of the Royal Meteorological Society, Mr. W. Mariott gave an account of the thunder and hailstorms which occurred over England and the south of Scotland on July 8, 1893. Thunderstorms were very numerous on that day, and in many instances were accompanied by terrific hailstorms and squalls of wind. It was during one of these squalls that a pleasure boat was capsized off Skegness, twenty-nine persons being drowned. About noon a thunderstorm, accompanied by heavy hail and a violent squall of wind, passed over Dumfries and along the valley of the Nith; many of the hailstones measured from 1 inch to 1½ inches in length. At the same hour a similar storm occurred at Peterborough. From 2 until 10 P.M. there was a succession of thunderstorms over the northeast of England and southeast of Scotland, and at many places it was reported that the thunderstorms were continuous for nine hours. Two storms were remarkable for the immense hailstones which fell during their prevalence over Harrogate and Richmond in Yorkshire. The hailstones were four and five inches in214circumference, and some as much as three inches in diameter. Great damage was done by these storms, all windows and glass facing the direction from which the storm came being broken. It is computed that within a radius of five miles of Harrogate not less than 100,000 panes of glass were broken, the extent of the damage being estimated at about £3,000. The thunderstorms in the northern part of the country traveled generally in a north northwesterly direction, at the rate of about twenty miles an hour. They appear to have taken the path of least resistance, and consequently passed over low ground and along river valleys and the seacoast. Several storms seem to have followed each other along the same track.—Scientific American, Dec. 30, 1893.