Democratic Sentinel, Volume 22, Number 15, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 16 April 1898 — EMBRYONIC TORNADO. [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

EMBRYONIC TORNADO.

Singular I henomenon Witnessed at and Near New Orleans. A singular,phenomenou recently met the eyes of she good burghers of New Orleans, La. Some excitedly called out that it was a cyclone, others called it a waterspout, and still others dubbed it whirlwind and tornado. Whatever it was, it was, at all events, very active and menacing for a quarter of an hour, and kept a large portion of the community in painful suspense until it disappeared. The w r hatever-it-was appeared dramatically over Lake Pontcliartrain, darting down in a livid, sulphurous haze, and hanging down like a great blue black icicle from a heavy black pall of cloud. Although a great distance - from the center of the city, It could be seen that the cloud cylinder was revolving at a terrible clip in space. For a while it hung gracefully pendant, then by force the centrifugal action began to lift at the bottom until it had assumed the shape of an enormous

sickle, thrust down angrily from heaven, ready to mow away all before it. The next change was one of gradual dissolution, the tail curling up and then flying off at right angles to the eastward in thin black vermiculate streamers like snakes. At one time in. the process of dissolution it looked as if it were going to reform, but of a sudden gave over the idea and melted away In space, much as a cloudlet does in the blue of a summer day. As soon as the cloud had dissolved, or drawn hack into the big nimbus

from which It was born, heavy showers of Tain fell from opposite ends of the mother cloud and soon cleared the atmosphere.

THE WONDERFUL CLOUD.