Remarkable Storm.
The following remarkable letter in the “Gentleman’s Magazine,” relates to the present day seventy years ago.
Mr. Urban, Wigton, Oct. 23, 1756.
On the 6th inst. at night, happened a most violent hurricane; such a one perhaps as has not happened in these parts, in the memory of man. It lasted full 4 hours from about 11 till 3. The damage it has done over the whole county is very deplorable. The corn has suffered prodigiously.—Houses were not only unroofed, but in several places overturned by its fury.—Stacks of hay and corn were entirely swept away.—Trees without number torn up by the roots. Others, snapt off in the middle, and scattered in fragments over the neighbouring fields. Some were twisted almost round; bent, or split to the roots, and left in so shattered a condition as cannot be described.
The change in the herbage was also very surprising; its leaves withered shrivelled up, and turned black. The leaves upon the trees, especially on the weather side, fared in the same manner. The Evergreens alone seem to have escaped, and the grass recovered in a day or two.
I agreed, at first, with the general opinion, that this mischief was the effect of Lightning; but, when I recollected that, in some places, very little had been taken notice of; in others none at all; and that the effect was general, I begun to think of accounting for it from some other cause. I immediately examined the dew or rain which had been left on the grass, windows, &c. in hopes of being enabled, by its taste, to form some better judgment of the particles with which the air had been impregnated, and I found it as salt as any sea water I had ever tasted. The several vegetables also were all saltish more or less, and continued so for 5 or 6 days, the saline particles not being then washed off; and when the moisture was exhaled from the windows, the saline chrystal sparkled on the outside, when the sun shined, and appeared very brilliant.
This salt water, I conceive, has done the principal damage, for I find upon experiment, that common salt dissolved in fresh water affected some fresh vegetables, when sprinkled upon them, in the very same manner, except that it did not turn them quite so black,—but particles of a sulphurous, or other quality,[373] may have been mixed with it.
I should be glad to see the opinions of some of your ingenious correspondents on this wonderful phenomenon;—whether they think this salt water was brought from the sea,[374] and in what manner.
Yours, A. B.