The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1880-05-01 00:00:00

THE SToURIiIIIDGE' OBSERVER.

THE RECENT TORNADO IN AMERICA

. The Daily Telegraph, in a leader commenting upon the re-
cent tornado in Missouri, remarks :

"Nothing is more common in that portion of the
United States which was once designated as 'the great
American desert,' but is now called 'the plains,' than
to hear stories -of English tourists who avow their
intention of taking a walk to some mountain of
which, to all appearance, the foot is not more than
two or three miles distant. Thus, in Mr. Murphy's
recently-published 'Rambles in North-Western
America, it is related that a stranger from the
Old Country set out before breakfast to reach
one of those towering peaks which lift their heads
aloft into the pure and dazzling atmosphere.
Having, after a walk of some miles, come to the bank
of a small stream, the tourist fell in with a native,
who informed him, to his infinite astonishment, that
the mountain before him was fifty miles away. The
clearness of the atmosphere had deceived him, as it
had deceived many others, and he returned to his
hotel, weary and crestfallen, to encounter the good-
humoured raillery of those who had seen him start
forth so blithely in the morning. It is in these
vast central plains that, according to Mr. Burley,
the author of 'The United States' Centennial
Gazetteer and Guide,' the storms of North America
take their rise, making their way in an east-north-
eastern direction across the country. The rate at
which one of these storms travels varies from fifteen
to fifty miles an hour. These are of many kinds,
from local tempests to whirlwinds, or tornadoes, of
an inconceivable fury and force. Such a tornado has
just visited four or hve States upon each side of the
Mississippi, and the accounts of its devastations
which have already reached us report that at least
one hundred and fifty persons have perished, that
hundreds more have been injured, of whom it is cer-
tam that many will die, and that the total amount of
the damage done in a sparsely-settled neighbour-
hood is roughly and inadequately estimated at
,one hundred thousand pounds. In presence of so
great a calamity, it becomes Englishmen to re-
member with gratitude that these islands within the
last thousand years have known but one such storm as
this. 'The great tempest of Nov. 26 and 27, 1703,'
says Lord Macaulay, 'the only tempest which in our
latitude has equalled the rage of a tropical hurricane,
left a dreadful recollection in the minds of all men.
No other tempest in this country was ever the occa-
sion of a Parliamentary address or a public fast.
Whole fleets were cast away, large mansions were
blowa down. One prelate was buried under
the ruins of his palace. London and Bristol
psesented the appearance of cities just sacked.
The prostrate trunks of large trees and the
ruins of houses attested the fury of the blast.'
Happily, however, from 1703 to the present day, there
has in Great Britain been no repetition of a storm
upon this unprecedented scale. 'Violent gales there
have been time and again, accompanied by much
destruction of property and by some loss of life; but,
while the land-cyclones or tornadoes of the United
States are of almost annual occurrence; the limited
dimensions of these islands and the absence of
elevated ranges of mountains exempt us from such
terrible visitations
"There are many indications that these devastating
tempests have occurred upon the North American
continent from the earliest times when it was in-
habited by white men, but at present it is in the
valley or basin of the Mississippi that they are most
frequently encountered. During the present century,
Ohio, Illinois, Indiana, Missouri, lowa, and Wis-
consin have suffered more from them than any
other portions of the great Republic; but it is cer-
tain that when what are now the States of NeNy
York and Pennsylvania were vast tracts dr
primeval forest, the tornado occasionally made wild
work among them. It is claimed by many English
and American writers—and among the former by Lord
Dunraven, a most competent authority--that the cli-
mate of the United States is undergoing many marked
changes, as forests are disappearing under the white
man's axe, and as swamps and marshes are beginning
to feel the effects of drainage, and the lowering of
rivers, caused by the exposure of a larger surface of land,
year after year, to the direct rays of the sun, uninter-
cepted by the foliage of trees. There may, then, be
good grounds for hoping that, sooner or later, the ad-
vance of civilisation, accompanied by the increased or
extended reclamation of virgin land, may lead to at-
mospheric changes which will cause tornadoes to
disappear in the United States. It is singular that
upon the plains, where they are believed
.to be gene-
rated, no instance of their occurrence is. recorded,
while in the Gulf States they are comparatively rare.
But upon the prairies of those vast agricultural States
which will soon be the garden of the Western Re-
public, there is so much room and verge for storms
blown down from the. Rocky Mountains, and stimu-
lated, as it is generally believed, by the extraordinary
amount of electricity in the air, to run riot, tha,t
for many decades to come tornadoes will recur
with as much certainty as summer follows winter
and winter summer. It is, therefore, much to be
desired that substantial insurance offices should
be encouraged in the United States, which are
willing and able to accept risks upon building and
crops, and to remunerate their owners if a tornado
overtakes them. We entertain no doubt that in the
present instance the full damage done in Missouri and
in the adjoining States by the recent furious tempest
or cyclone far surpasses the estimates conjecturally
formed upon this side of the Atlantic; but it iortu-
nate that no portion of the country is better able, by
reason of its amazing prosperity and rapidly increasing
wealth, to recover from losses of this kind than the
four or 'five agricultural States within whose confines
a tornado of unusual violence has just run its deso-
lating course."

A Times' telegram says :—"Tornadoes passed over
Northern Alabama and Mississippi on Sunday evening.
At Macon, Mississippi, at eight in the evening, a tor-
nado destroyed the western portion of the town, killed
22 persons and injured 32, and destroyed 40 buildings,
including the station and adjacertt buildings of the
Mobile and Ohio Railroad. The loss is estimated at
225,000 dollars. At Point Rock, Alabama, six persons
were killed and five buildings were destroyed."