Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 22, Number 83, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 5 July 1901 — A Tremendous Rain. [ARTICLE]

A Tremendous Rain.

A rain and thunder storm which passed south over a portion of Jasper county Tuesday, about noon and was a moderately severe storm in Rensselaer, increased greatly in magnitude as it went southward, and through Jordan and Carpenter townships was a regular deluge, almost entitled to be called a cloud burst. In Remington daring the hour which the rain lasted there were exactly three inches of rainfall, as shown in three separate measurements, in as many straight sided vessels; and it seemed likely that a few miles north from Remington the rainfall, was still greater. There was considerable wind with the rain, and also some hail. The electrical features of the storm were equally unusual, and there was a constant repitition of terrible thunder claps, indicating lighning strokes in the near vicinity. No doubt many such occurred in every direction, and the evidence that they did is seen alongthe south half of the road between Remington and Rensselaer, where the Jasper County Telephone Company’s poles were struck in four or five widely separated places, and the Halleck line at least once. From one to three jyfles are shattered at each place. At another place a large oak tree near the road was torn absolutely to fragments by a lightning stroke. For long distances the road which in the morning was entirely dry, in the evening was from a few inches to two feet under water. One of these stretches, in Jordan tp., was over a quarter of a mile in length, and in places so deep that the water would come into the buggy boxes. Great damage was done in low places by the flooding of meadows, oats and corn fields. In many places there would be regular lakes 30 or 40 acres in extent, where, in the morning, were promising fields of oats, com or hay.