LATE NEWS MINOR TORNADO HITS NELSON: SOME DAMAGE

Greymouth Evening Star, 17 August 1949, Page 5

LATE NEWS MINOR TORNADO HITS NELSON: SOME DAMAGE

NELSON, This Day (P.A.).—A tornado, fortunately of minor intensity, passed across the eastern part of Nelson at 10.5 this morning, causing some damage to buildings and several breaks in electric wires, which resulted in power being off in parts of the town during the morning. One house at the corner of Manuka and Tasman streets, owned by Mr W. T. Simpson, had about onethird of the roof blown off and the chimney blown over. That was the worst damage in the track of the storm. Several commercial glasshouses had a number of sheets of glass pulled out, but the damage was not serious. The most spectacular part of the storm was seen when it travelled along a row of fowlhouses and sheds behind dwellings in Milton street, where residents saw parts of buildings, fowls, and broken glass from a small backyard glasshouse flying through the air. A number -of windows were blown out. Wireless poles are down and one large tree in the grounds of the Government buildings was uprooted. The track of the tornado was only about 30 feet wide and it passed a given point in a few seconds. No one was injured.