GREAT STORMS IN BRITAIN.

Timaru Herald, Volume LXXVI, Issue 11662, 22 January 1902, Page 4

GREAT STORMS IN BRITAIN.

(From Home Papers.) On December Bth and 9th a wild stoim prevailed over England and Scotland, a compound of cold gale and rain, hailstorms, and snowstorms. Heavy hailstorms passed over London, and numerous panes of glass were broken in nursery garuens. It was in the provinces, however? that the ravages were chiefly felt. In Yorkshire the chimney of the deep pit at the Morley Main Colleries was blown down. The stack, which was forty yards high, fell on the adjoining engine house, and the man in charge, Jonathan Foster, aged sixty-two, who had been in the enipioy of the tirm for thirty-five years, was crushed to death. # Three new hou.-es at C'astleford were completely wrecked, to the accompaniment of a peal of thunder. A tremendous gust of wind swept off the roofs, and flung tnem against the front of other houses, smashing in the.windows and damaging the furniture. The inhabitants, amid a shower of falling bricks, ran out of their houses shrieking with fright. A most violent storm struck Xelson (Lancashire). A factory chimney thirty feet high was rased to the ground, but fortunately no one was hurt.. Another factory chimney was almost cut in two by lightning. Nearly every street in the town was strewn with slates stripped from the roofs of the houses, whilst in the suburbs many trees were uprooted. Tempestuous weather was experienced in South Notts. Snow fell heavily for some hours, and at times a perfect blizzard prevailed, rendering traffic in the country districts extremely difficult. At Shrewsbury the Severn rose all day, with unusual rapidity, and the inhabitants in the lowlying parts of the town prepared for a flood. Reports from the upper country stated that the river was over the banks, and thousands of acres of land under water. A fierce snowstorm prevailed in the. Shields district. Work at the shipyards had to be suspended during the afternoon, and there was general interruption of all outdoor employment. Vessels trading on the coast ran into the Tyne for shelter. Heavy snowstorms occurred in the Peak district. Between Buxton and Hollingcough a woman was found frozen to death. In Xorth Wales the visitation was also very severe, and the mountains were deeply enveloped in snow. Along the coast the gale was fearful.. The lowl;inds were inundated. Further north the weather was as bad. Throughout the south of Scotland blinding snow showers fell. By the afternoon snow lay in the towns to a depth of three inches, while outside, and especially in the highlying districts amongst the hills, it was much deeper. A severe snowstorm was experienced over the Central and Western Districa of Perthshire, and trains were rendered somewhatlate by accumulations of snow on the tracks. The storm was general all over the Highland Railway system. - The gale was fresh in the Channel, and the Ostend mail steamers reported very heavy seas in crossing. The steamer Petrolo was pipked up by a French tug in the Channel in a disabled condition. Wreckage was washed ashore on the Belgian coast. Wreckage from three ships on this coast had been identified.

.. The receding tide left Weston-super-Mare and the adjacent bays strewn with wreckage. from which it was conjectured that more than cne vessel has gone down during the storm. A baby was washed ashore at Berrow Bay. Three days later another and more destructive storm passed over the greater part of the United Kingdom, the south-east of England escaping the worst of it. This was the -storm which interrupted telegraphic communication between London and the north. In London only a cold rain fell all dav.

A London daily of the 14th says :—For 20 years the country has cot seen such a disastrous snowstorm as the one whose effect was visible all over the north of England yesterday. Over 1500 Post Office linesmen are now out endeavouring to repai; the countless broken wires. Some notion of the area of the damage may be gained from the experience of the Great Central line to the north. For 100 hundred miles along the track practically the whole telegraphic system has been demolished, wires oa the ground, and posts uprooted, and trains have had to " crawl" along. Liverpool, yesterday, for a second day, suffered the extraordinary experience of practically complete isolation, so far as the telegraphic service is concerned, fiom the rest of the world. An odd rumour got abroad in the morning that, consequent upon the disruption of the telegraphic service, there was fear in New York of a commercial panic, to avert which ifc had been decided,that "Wall Street" should " close its doors." Whether such a rumour was authentic or not could not be ascertained. The Stock Market also was completely disorganised. Brokers, ot course, had to submit to the inevitable, and many of them appear to have decided to make the best of circumstances by closing at an early hour. The Liverpool Post Office, in the afternoon, intimated that communication was still entirely stopped, not only with London and the Continent, but also from all places in England south of Chester and east of Manchester, and also in South Wales, whilst more or less delay was occasioned in communication with Yorkshire, Newcastle-on-Tyne district, Scotland. Ireland, and North Wales. The Post Office, as is their custom in such emergencies, had to utilise the train service for the dispatch ot telegrams, but such work of course has affected the large araiv of telegraph operators at the General Post Office, where the instrument rooms show a whole staff sitting idle in front of their instruments waiting an opportunity of tackling" the immense arrears of telegraphic dispatches still accumulating . The almost complete collapse of the telegraph service between the Yorkshire centres, such as Leeds and Bradford. and London, occasioned the greatest inconvenience to the commercial community, and at Leads there was a great outcrv for a svstem of underground wires. The fierce wind, which commenced about mid-day on Thursdav, continued until yesterday, blowinn- firm the north and east, and the accompaniment of snow and sleet rendered I manv of the thoroughfares next to impassable. The trains from the south were on Thursdav night and yesterday morning several hours late. The tramway services were considerablv dislocated. The damage done was chiefly to the telegraphic and telephonic wires and poles in all diiections. Yesterday morning's north country provmcial papers appeared -without anv London news, except such as had been sent by tram. Inquiries made at St. Martin s-le-Grand elicited the information that the breakdown in telegraphic communication, as a result of the storm, had been extensive and serious. "It is really impossible," an official saidj "to say how extensive the damage to the telegraph lines had been, because we have practically been cut-off from our superintendents north of Birmingham. Thus we have not been able to get any detailed information as to the effects oi the storm north of that city. As yon mav know, there are underground wires as "far as Birmingham, hence the non - disturbance of communication with it. The storm would appear to have travelled by the south of Ireland, and up our southwestern counties, right to the, north. London and the southern counties have seen little of it " The trouble of this storm, it "appeared, was this—the snow being I damp as it fell, clung to the telegraph wires In that wav they became greatly weighted, and necessarily there were extensive breakdowns.- - Had the snow been drv it would not have clung in the same manner to the wires. Every resource w.33 being used.-in getting through by roundabout route's telegrams for northern places^ A severe snowstorm in Birmingham diu considerable damage, and most inconvenience was caused by the breakage througß the heavy weight of snow upon them ot a large number of telephone and telegraph wires, which disorganised the telephonic communication from the centre of the city aid all telegraphic communication from Birmingham to the north, east, ana west of England, and tr> Ireland and Scotlond. At Netberton, near Dudley, (lie electric viies collapsed and struck two horses attached to a funeral hearse, killing them instantaneously. A horse attached to a grocer's dray at Bxierly Hill was killed under similar circumstances.

At Derby no fewer than 2000 telephone wires were found to have gone down. The Treat and Derwent were in high flood, thousands of acres being under water. Owing to the wholesale collapse of the te'jegraph poles, consequent on the stcrm. traffic could not be conducted on the block system in the usual way, and on the L. and N.W. line a passenger train dashed into u .joods train. Several trucks were thrown off the line, and two persons were injured. There was again a heavy sea in the Channel and in the North Sea, and several wreck.* of small vessels were reported.