Democratic Sentinel, Volume 9, Number 19, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 5 June 1885 — THE CYCLONE SEASON. [ARTICLE]

THE CYCLONE SEASON.

A Kansas Town Visited by a Funnel-Shaped: Cloud, and the Citizens Save Themselves by Crawling Into Their Cyclone Holes. [Atchison (Kan.) special.] Particulars of the cyclone at Goffs, Kan.,. have reached here. The appearance of the storm, which approached from the southwest, was grand and awful, and the' frightful roar of the whirling, lightningedged clouds was louder than the combined noise of a hundred guns. The path of the storm through the town did not exceed twenty or thirty rods in width, but within that space everything destructible is a wreck. Two persons were fatally and several seriously injured. One man was lifted up by the whirling wind, carried a distance of thirty yards, and deposited in a. door-yard. Flying timbers had broken both his legs, and when found he was insensible.

The appearance of the town after the storm had passed was desolate and forlorn beyond description. The panic-stricken citizens, many of whom had received slight injuries, emerged from cellars and “cyclone holes,” into which they had plunged, and set about rescuing the wounded, and recovering property, which littered the ground in every direction.

Some strange phenomena were witnessed in connection with the storm. The curb of H. G. Pickett’s well was broken of close tothe ground and the well itself stuffed full of chickens. A thick mist flying at an awful rate of speed seemed to precede thecyclone, while during its prevalence wind, rain, hail, thunder, and lightning blended into one awful and never-to-be-forgotten scene.