NORTH OTAGO.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 20610, 8 January 1929, Page 6

NORTH OTAGO.

(From Ode Special Correspondent.}

1 REMARKABLE VISITATION. OAMARU, January 7. While Oamaru was shaken by deafening thunder claps yesterday afternoon, some of the outlying districts underwent a terrifying experience. A line stretching across a section of country extending from Five Forks to Ngapara was swept by a hailstorm of nnparnllelled severity about 2 o’clock. The countryside was almost enveloped in darkness, and then there came blinding flashes of lightning and tremendous crashes of thunder. The heavens appeared immediately afterwards to open up and liberate a shower of miniature golf balls for. fully 10 minutes.- The balls of ice _ descended and the earth was covered inches deep with a mantle of white. Settlers and their families were terrified with the experience, as windows and roofs of buildings were shattered. The iron roof of one building was dented, as if a shower of bullets had fallen upon it. Those who were in the open sought shelter in every available nook, and it is almost a miracle that fatalities have not to be reported. The stories that reached Oamaru yesterday afternoon could scarcely be believed, but as a new Essex sedan car, driven by, Mr, M'Donald, of Kibble street, arrived in town, the magnitude of the visitation could be appreciated to some extent. The leather surface of the hood had been ripped as though it had been slashed by a knife. Mr M'Donald brought .to town some of, the hailstones which were then, bigger than marbles. He states that he had never before been in such a storm, and does not wish a similar experience. Other motorists had even, more terrifying times. One resident of Windsor had to get underneath' his car to' save himself from the shower of ice baljs that smashed through the hood of his yehicle. The damage done to other motor cars has. also been considerable. The full extent of the havoc wrought by the storm cannot be ascertained for a day or . two, but one mqtorist who reached town last night estimates it .at thousands of pounds The damage to crops will be particularly

ACTIVITIES OF THE DISTRICT.

serious. A farmer, who had ordered two new reaping machines, telephoned to the merchants cancelling the order, as he stated that bis crops had been completely ruined. Stock must also have suffered considerably, though reports are fragmentary and’ inconclusive. Mr Bruce Meek, of Enfield, states that, although there was not a great fall of hail in his locality, he could see across the country to Kia Ora and Five Forks that there must have been a tremendous fall in those districts, as the ground was as white as snow for fully an hour after the visitation. Mr Meek recalls the fact that on January 6, 1896, there was a similar visitation, when the hailstones crashed through the iron roofs of buildings in all directions. . The manager of ,an Oamaru mercantile house who visited the afflicted district late yesterday afternoon expresses amazement at the devastation that has been wrought. Hundreds of acres of wheat crops which' promised handsome yields have been flattened out as though cut by a scythe and are completely ruined. Mangel and turnip crops have also been destroyed. The damage, he says, must run into many thousands of pounds. Some of the settlers and their families had exceedingly narrow escapes. The members of one family who were caught in the open were severely bruised about the body before they succeeded in reaching shelter; It is no exaggeration to say that the pellets or ice in some places were. as large as golf balls. Strangely enough while some were „ spherical in form, others were square-shaped blocks. One settler, who estimates his loss in crops alone at 1:600, states that it seemed to him as though an iceberg had been released from the clouds and broke* in its descent into millions of particles. The line traversed by the hailstorm seems to have been about five miles from east to west and 15 miles from north to south. The storm was severely felt at Georgetown and the neighbourhood, but the worst damage appears to have been done at Kia Ora, Five Forks, and Windsor. • ■ Mr Bruce Meek informed ■ the representative of the Otago Daily Times last evening that since he had learned the seriousness of the visitation he had motored round some parts of the district, and to him it was most distressing to see what destruction had been brought in the course of a few minutes. ' At' Mr T. Wilkinson’s a crop of wheat had been mown down, while on Mr G. Ludemann’s and neighbouring farms the scene was one of desolation. A crop of peas that was standing high had been reduced to a pulp, while crops of mangels and rape, were similarly treated. One crop of oate that was standing in stook was threshed bare of the cereal. The severity of the storm was everywhere in evidence, pine trees having been stripped of their leaves and gorse hedges torn about as by a tornado. Mr Meek stated that a calamity such as that of yesterday has not before befallen the district in his experience. The only fortunate circumstance is that it was confined to a limited area.