Lou’s View: STORMING INTO 1903
By Lou Bernard
Seems that every time I turn around, I’m getting a severe weather warning of some kind. Storms, hail, lightning….It’s somehow both exciting and terrifying. I get these things on Facebook, in e-mail, and the only reason I don’t get them on my cell phone is because I barely use it. It would have been less disruptive during a very bad storm in Clinton County, once upon a time. There were no electronic warnings going out, because it was 1903.
Of course, that also meant nobody was prepared and it did a lot of damage.
The Clinton Republican ran the story on September 2, 1903. The storm had happened the previous Tuesday, on August 26. It was mid-afternoon, about two PM. The front page was basically covered with the news, which began,”A terrific wind, rain, and hail storm struck this place at 2 o’clock yesterday afternoon, and did unestimable damage to property, fruit trees, and vegetation. The wind attained the velocity of a hurricane and drove the rain and hail straight ahead like shot from a cannon. The low heavy clouds made the darkness almost as great as at night.”
It’s not too often that you see storms compared to both hurricanes and cannons in the same paragraph. The county treasurer at the time, John R. Thompson of Salona, watched as his tobacco shed was pushed aside by the wind for six feet. This may not sound too dramatic yet, but consider that the shed was 128 feet long.
Over in Beech Creek, the community was hit hard by the storm. Hail smashed a huge hole in the roof of the local railroad station, and a store owned by G.F Hess was almost blown entirely off. The Chief Burgess, H.H. Mothersbaugh (“Chief Burgess” is more or less the guy in charge) took a lot of damage to his home’s roof, chimneys, and porches.
The local Presbyterian church lost most of its roof, and Beech Creek lost a willow tree that caused some mourning.
“Sharp lighting accompanied the storm which struck a beautiful weeping willow tree on the bank of the creek at the bridge and shattered it,” read the article. “It had stood there before this town existed and was pointed to with pride and something like reverence.” For the record, that may have made the tree at least a century old—Settlers first arrived in Beech Creek around 1812, though it wasn;t founded until 1869. (Don’t expect me to start doing math all the time.)
One man tried to escape from Beech Creek to Lock Haven, assuming it was safer there. He found out that the route was somewhat less than ideal, as the newspaper reported,”The road from that place to Mill Hall was almost impassable, being obstructed by trees, fences, and poles that had been leveled by the wind.”
William DeHaas was traveling in a horse-drawn carriage from the Tangascootac mining towns with two other men, two women, and two children. They were still on the mountain when the storm arrived. The article described it as a “thrilling experience.”
Farmer Jacob Bixel, on the outskirts of Mill Hall, had fences blown over a hundred feet. His barn roof took a lot of damage, and the cow inside was injured. Don’t worry, the cow survived—The cow was considered “valuable” and probably got better medical treatment than some of the people in this situation.
“The hail fell so thick that at some places it could be scooped up with a shovel,” the Republican reported. “The high wind thrashed large quantities of apples and peaches from the trees, and leveled the corn to the ground in some fields.”
Clinton County recovered, of course. The newspapers reported on the storm, and somehow managed to not be blown away. Which is how I found all this on microfilm over a century later, and wrote about it. Probably just in time for my next weather alert.
