A TYPHOON.

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume VII, Issue 1032, 4 June 1880, Page 2

A TYPHOON.

A correspondent at Mysia of the Btndigo Independent, writing on the 10th inst., gives the following particulars cf a typhoon which occured northwest of Boort last week, and which had been related to him by an eye witness: — " About noon on Wednesday last a vast bank of clouds, extending along the western horizon, and moving rapidly to the south, was observed from the residence of Messrs. M'Lean Brothers, Woolshed Lake. The weather was fine and the air perfectly calm. Shortly however, a westerly wind set in, when a storm approaching at a fearful rate was noticed. The wind increased in violence, and blew from every point of the compass. " Suddenly,' says my informant, 'we heard a loud roaring sound in the west, and immediately afterwards noticed several large trees falling within a hundred yards of our residence. We hastened to the kitchen (a detached building) for shelter, the door of which we closed. Everything got quite dark, and the roaring sound was now frightful, the storm being at its height. We heard loud crashing noises all round the house and we were in fear every moment of being crushed to death. The extreme violence of the wind continued only about a minute, and then we ventured to open the door. The whole space between" the kitchen and dwelling-house was thickly strewn with large limbs of trees and timber, which had been blown there from a distance of 50ft. A large limb from a tree 50 yards distant was carried on to tho roof, fortunately without doing much damage except bending it in. A tree standing 20 yards from the house was entirely stripped of its branches, another being quite rooted out of the ground, leaving a large excavation. Threefourths of the roof were blown quite away, 16 large sheets of corrugated iron being found 150 yards distant. One large sheet was carried with such force from the roof that it caught in the limb of a tree a hundred yards of. The force of the blow snapped the limb, the stump of which pierced a hole through the sheet of iron, and there it now remains wrapped round the trunk of the tree like a sheet of paper. Nearly all the sheets of iron were destroyed, being twisted and bent in all directions. The width of the whirlwind varied from 20 to about 60 or 70 yards, and within these limits it took almost everything before it. Its path can also be easily followed by the fallen timber which marks its oourae for nearly two miles."