STARTLING INCIDENTS

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXIII, Issue 22345, 17 February 1936, Page 10

STARTLING INCIDENTS

STORM IN CANTERBURY VIVID LIGHTNING DISPLAY [by telegraph —OWN correspondent] CHRISTCHURCH. Sunday Some startling incidents occurred at the height of an electrical storm over the Canterbury Plains this morning. On a Dunsandel farm two cows and a horse were struck dead. A few miles away a man had just climbed through a fence when lightning flashed along the wire, and on a North Canterbury farm a family saw a strauge phenomenon which they described as a ball of fire. Mr. F. Page, of Christchurch, had a lucky escape on the roadside between Killinchy and Dunsandel. .He had stopped his motor-car to gather mushrooms in a paddock. Just as he was climbing through a fence there was a brilliant flash of forked lightning and sparks lit the barbed-wire for some distance. Mrs. Page, who had remained in the car, cried out to her husband, thinking for the moment that he had been caught in the fence. Ho had just got clear, but the light affected his eyes for some minutes. A green gorse fence round a 40-acre paddock on a Swannanoa farm was seen to be alight in nine places. Tho phenomenon was apparently confined to tho one property for neighbouring farmers noticed nothing more than thunder.

The storm was experienced in Christchurch between 11.15 a.m. and 12.45 p.m. Heavy rain fell and there were brilliant lightning flashes. The telephone service was temporarily interrupted in some country districts.