The Ocala banner. (Ocala, Marion County, Fla.) 1883-194?, 1914-04-17
ADDITIONAL REPORTS OF WIND
AND HAIL STORM

wind, rain and hail storm in the Low
ell settlement Thursday was much
more furious and destructive than
was at first reported.
II is said to have been unprece
denied.
The terrific hail storm was accom-
panied by a furious wind, which up
rooted oak, hickory and magnolia
trees with trunks as big around as
whiskey barrels, and hurled them
F., through the air like chaff for dis
lance of fifty yards or more.
Miles and miles of fencing were de-
moIished and houses were lifted from
their underpinnings. and some were
twisted completely around.
The Wetumpka orange grove, from
which was shipped the past season
twenty-five thousand boxes of fruit,
and a much larger crop was estimat-
ed for next season, was whipped not
only of it's bloom and foliage, but the
limbs were twisted off the trees like
so many brittle broom straws-and
the branch of an orange tree is about
as tough, unyielding and elastic as a
piece of raw-hide. 1t required a strong
and busy wind to strip them from
their places.
The hail stones not only pelted
through the roofs of houses, but in
some instances bore their way
through the sides like cannon balls
in bombardment.
The hailstones, or at least many of
them, were not spherical as in ordi-
nary cases, but were in all sorts of
shapes, ragged and jagged, and seem
to have frozen together, so to speak,
before hitting the ground, and fell in
blocks.
In low places the ground was COW
cred to depth of three feet, and
twenty-four hours after the catastro-
phe the ground was still covered over
twelve inches thick.
Mr.. Ben Raysor says that his farm
was in the wake of the storm, and
that his fields were left bare. He had
one hundred and forty acres in wa
termelons and cantaloupes, and had
just bought six hundred and forty dol
lars worth of fertilizer. He will re-
plant his fields to peanuts, which he
is convinced is the coming crop of
Florida.
Mr.. z. C. Chambliss, of the firm of
Chambliss & Howell, was one of the
sufferers. He went out early yester-
day morning, and returned with sam
pies of some of the cabbage. They
presented the appearance of having
been pressed through sausage mill,
or had figured in the conflict at Tor
reon.
Mr.. Chambliss says that in field
OF one hundred and twenty acres of
corn, a foot high. not a stalk is left
standing to tell the tale.
Mr.. Meffert lost a field of corn of
the same size.
Tomatoes, beans, cabbage and ev-
cry kind of plant in the wake of the
storm was devastated.
Mr.. ]. s. Grantham, who lives just
outside the limits of the wind and hail
storm area, but within the edge of
the rain storm, had his mule killed in
the shafts by a bolt of lightning,
while several members of his family
who were sitting in the body of the
wagon, to which the mule was at
tached, escaped unhurt.
The fierceness of the tornado, its
devastation, and the many miracu-
lous escapes were the subject of con-
versation by groups of men nearly
all day yesterday, as the sufferers
came in from the devastated district
and were recounting its terrors.
A great number of farmers who
have tomato plants are furnishing the
same to the sufferers, with which to
reset their lands. 1t is said that they
will be given all the plants they need.
Mr.. Chambliss sent out a number
of carpenters to repair some of the
damage done to the houses, and he
says that within two or three weeks
the houses will all be repaired, the
fences rebuilt. the fields replanted,
and it will only be referred to as a
memory.
The Damage at Pine
The following letter WAS received