The true northerner. [volume] (Paw Paw, Mich.) 1855-1920, 1875-08-20
TERRIFIC STORM.
The City of Geneva, Switzerland, Devas
tated by "a Tornado.

The City of Geneva, Switzerland, Devas-
tated by Tornado.
A correspondent at Geneva gives an
account in one of the papers, this morn
ing, of terrible storm which broke over
the city at midnight, Wednesday, the
7th of July. About o'clock few heavy
drops of rain began to fall, and at the
same time the whole temperature of the
horizon began to be fitfully illuminated
by flashes of sheet-hghtning, but there
was no thunder. Once only, during the
entire night, was there one terrific clap
of thunder, and that was when the storm
was just over. The lightning gradually
increased in intensity, and became, in
deed, actually, and without exaggera-
ton, continuous. The entire atmos-
phere seemed TO be an element of flames,
and all this time there was not the
slightest movement of air in the streets.
At about II o'clock, small objects lying
on the roofs of houses were caught up
and whirled around as by a cyclone.
Still there was no movement of the air
in the streets below. At midnight the
tempest came, mainly from the Jura
range, and from the southwest, travel
ing in that direction toward the basin
of Lake Leman F.; as it neared the lake,
it seemed to spread out into fan-like
form, with front sufficiently wide to
embrace the entire city,. 1t did not last
much longer than ten minutes, but at
the end of it Geneva was wrecked as no
army of besiegers could have wrecked it
in the same space of time. The storm
came in the shape of an almost compact
mass, a sheet of ice driven horizontally
before the tempest blast. In the first
instant every gas lamp in the streets,
save here and there one spared by rea-
son of some protecting roof, was smashed
to atoms and extinguished, but the city
was not in darkness, for the masses of
coagrllated hail reflected the blue light
of the lightning in a ghastly and omi-
Gus manner. The windows of manufac-
tories and residences were forced from
their fastenings, besides having all their
glass shivered, and bedrooms and stair
cases and saloons were thrown open to
the storm, and in n minute or two they
were half filled with masses of ice, far
beyond the immediate power of the in
habitants to remove, for the storm was
marked by this popularity, that hail
stones, or ice-fragments rather, COM
pacted themselves into a solid mass as
soon as they fell. In the slope of the
left bank of the river Arvie, in the sub
urbs of the city, the tiles of many
houses were absolutely beaten to pow
der. Stout partitions of wooden plank
were pierced by holes, such as might
have been made by nusket-ball.
Three persons were killed by the fall of
farmhouse. in the immediate vicinity
of the city. Vast quantities of small
birds have been picked up, killed by the
storm, and the bodies of several foxes
have been found. Geneva is surrounded
by pleasure-gardens, and vine yards
and market-gardens, and these have
been destroyed, as if charge of cavalry
had passed over them, involving the
ruin and despair of the poor and indus
trious peasants, whose all is now taken
from them as effectually as if it had been
sunk to the bottom of the sea.