| OCR Text |
Show FREAKS OF THE TORNADO. Man Caught Up by One Describes His Sensation. A tornado that was remarkable both in appearance and in action was one that traveled from Texas across Oklahoma Okla-homa and Indian Territory in May, 1890, says a writer in Ainslee's Magazine. Maga-zine. A man in Sherman, Oklahoma Territory, who had exceptional opportunities oppor-tunities for observing the storm, inasmuch in-asmuch as he was caught up in it and carried several hundred yards before descending to earth again, is certain that it was not funnel-shaped. He says of it: "It looked to me like a great ball of vapor rolling over and over toward me. When I first w it distinctly ic was at a hill perhaps an eighth of a mile away. It seemed to be about 250 yards wide and 100 feet high. The motion was that of a ball rolling over and over, not spiral, and it came on rather slowly, perhaps thirty miles an hour. Whatever th ball of cloud struck was lifted right off the ground. I saw it pick up housfl after house between the hill and me, and the cloud seemed to be full ol flying boards and timbers. When the ball reached Mrs. C 's, the house nearest me, it went straight np off its foundations. The house remained intact until it was about twenty of twenty-five feet from the ground; then it burst open, and the fragments flew in all directions. It looked like an exploding bomb. The corn and cotton standing a hundred feet on either eith-er side of the storm's path were uninjured, un-injured, but whenever the cloud struck the higher ground it spread out, covering cover-ing a wider strip of the surface. When the cloud struck me I went up lightly and easily, and the sensation was not unpleasant, but I came down hard, iid was badly shaken np, although not seriously injured. On the highway north of Sherman, fence wires were torn from the posts and pounded into the hard surface of the road a distance dis-tance of two or three inches." |
