THE GRINNELL CYCLONE. 83 have passed. It rained and hailed about fifteen minutes, when the storm seemed to have passed away. It was evident that the main force of the storm had been deflected from a direct course when it struck the timber, passing from that point nearly east. Feeling that some great damage had been done, I mounted a horse and started south to my father's house. Before I started I thought I heard the cry of a woman, and doubtless I was not mistaken, for on reaching my father's home I found the family, consisting of father, mother, a brother and a sister, all lying on the ground northwest of the demolished house. They were all injured, my father so seriously that he died two days afterwards. I soon found that the storm had destroyed my brother's house southwest a half mile, and that one of his children had been killed. Several houses were also destroyed northeast of my father's house, and several persons killed. The above testimony concerning the beginning of the storm is doubtless as correct and comprehensive as can be obtained, owing to the advantageous position of the witness. Continuing on its course, the cyclone reached a point nearly or quite two miles north and four miles west of Grinnell, where it struck a deep valley or "draw," running north and south. Here a strong current from the north carried the cyclone fully three miles south, and the next tidings of damage came from a point one and a half miles west of the south boundary of Grinnell, where it had resumed its original northeast direction. At this point a house was demolished and the occupants seriously injured. Crossing an east and west road it passed in a direct northeast course for Grinnell, doing no further damage, however, until it struck with terrible force near the western edge of the city. The testimony of W. O. Willard, a most reliable and careful observer, then living a little more than a mile west of town, near the point where the storm crossed the road, is as follows: I heard the roar and rush of the storm, which seemed just north of my house, and which followed a severe thunder storm. The cyclone seemed to be passing on toward Grinnell. At the same time, or a few seconds afterwards, another cyclone of less apparent force passed south of my house toward the southeast. The roar of the latter was not as loud as the other, although plainly heard. It passed on. doing some damage, but evidently spent its force in a few miles. I have also the testimony of several persons who were caught in the smaller branches of the storm, all of whom witness to its rotary motion and its lifting power. That the cyclone which first struck Grinnell and caused so great a loss of life was, as I first suggested, a small affair considered by itself, must be evident from a further investigation of the great storm wave. While nearly the entire State was practically in a storm on that Saturday night, the first damage of which we have any knowledge was near Arcadia, in the northwest part of Carroll county. Here a storm of great fury seemed gathering, and a church was moved from its foundation. Following southwest we come to Rippey, in the southeast part of Greene county, where much damage was done, and where at least one life was lost. Then the cyclone, for at this time it had developed into a well-defined funnel-shaped cloud, passed on toward Kelley in the southwest corner of Story county, near which place more lives were lost. At the same time an independent cyclone had formed and was getting in its work near Ogden, Boone county, north of the line of the main storm. Here, also, lives were lost. There now seemed to be an immense cloud, or a number of large and lurid clouds, from which at intervals cyclones would swing down toward the earth, several of these cyclones being seen at the same time, often several miles apart. Some of them passed away without seeming to touch the earth, while others would be alternately rising and falling, sometimes high in air, then with a swing and a swoop striking the earth and leveling everything in their path. In Story county two of these clouds passed eastward twenty minutes apart, and at a distance of three miles from each other, the one south of Kelley touching the earth southeast of that place, destroying considerable timber and a house or two. The other did little damage till south of Ames, when it destroyed several farm houses. Moving on southeasterly, these two cyclones did much damage between Nevada and Cambridge in Story county. The northerly one soon spent itself. The southerly one, which was doubtless the original one beginning in Carroll or Greene county, seemed to be gaining in size and in fury. Still rising and falling, it passed over corners of Marshall and Jasper counties, in a direct line for Grinnell, doing serious damage MAP SHOWING DIRECTION OF CYCLONES JUNE 17, 1882, WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE TO THE TWO CYCLONES MEETING AT GRINNELL. THE GRINNELL CYCLONE. 85 wherever it struck. We now have two independent cyclones each hastening with indescribable fury toward the doomed city of Grinnell. At about 8:30 on that fateful evening heavy and scattering drops of rain began to fall. The entire western sky was illuminated by continuous flashes of lightning as frequent as the beating of the pulse, while the distant roar of thunder was so continuous that it was not broken for even a second of time. In less than two minutes a severe thunder-storm broke over the city. This storm was several miles in width and was accompanied by a gusty, "jerky" wind, breaking off the limbs of trees and in many cases splitting or entirely demolishing tender or top-heavy trees like the soft maple. Such evidences of a severe storm were scattered throughout the town, even before the cyclone. This storm lasted some eight or ten minutes, and in its severity and fury was perhaps the equal of any storm of the kind which the writer may have seen during a residence of forty years in Iowa. Timid ones were alarmed, and not a few began to think of a place of safety. The wind and the rain slackened, yet the dead calm which followed, and the unearthly appearance of the sky produced an undefined sense of approaching calamity, or, at least, gave token that the storm might be repeated. A pause, a lull, a halt, as it were for a final charge, a rumbling as of a distant train of cars, only increased ten-fold in volume, and the direful moment arrived. Sixteen minutes of nine, said the battered clock amid the ruins of the first houses struck. Sixteen minutes of nine, said the watch taken from the owner's hands and hurled with flying timbers a full half mile and buried in the mud by the roadside, where it was found the next November. In a second of time a force estimated at not less than two hundred pounds to the square inch was lifting and twisting and hurling trees, buildings and human beings to destruction. From the windows in the upper story of the opera house, the highest building by far in the city, gazed a score or more of people, dumb witnesses of the awful horror. Sky and earth were illumined by a weird and ghastly glow, as if from the |