Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 34, Number 68, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 25 April 1902 — Tuesday’s Big Blow. [ARTICLE]

Tuesday’s Big Blow.

The Wind Was Stronger Than DonI nelly’s Onions. ’ 1 • The howling southwest wind i Tuesday worked serious damage to the extensive onion industry in this county. Alf Donnelly, 2 miles north of town, the largest individual onion raiser in the county and probably in the state, suffered worse than any others that we have heard from. He had 30 acres acres planted, and just ready to come up, His rich black soil was in a very fine state of s tilth, and also being very dry, the wind blew the soil all off the top of the ground, totally destroying his onion seeding. He will have to plant the whole 30 acres over again and has gone to Chicago, today, after the seed. He has thus lost not only SIOO worth of seed, but a good deal of labor, and the chance also for a good stand pf onions is much less than it was. His laud of course is also damaged by the blowing away of so much rich soil. The extent to which this did blow away is shown on an adjoining piece of meadow land. This caught the soil from the onion fields, and where Monday was a fine piece of meadow is now, to all appearances, a plowed field. In some places the meadow is covered 6 inches deep with soil from the onion fields. In the onion belt in Gifford district, where some 600 acres are planted, the aggregate damage will no doubt be very great, although from the difference in the soil, it is not thought that any sowings are so completely ruined as Mr. Donnelly’s. Some parties around Newland, however, are already getting ready to replant their fields, and it may be found later that more of them will have to do so, also. One advantage many of the Gifford onion fields had over Donnelly’s was that they were sowed earlier and had made sufficient growth to hold the plants in the ground. At Newland the wind took the top square off from a freight car, on Gifford’s road. Another party who has suffered heavily was John Renicker, of the Poplar Grove fruit farm. He had just finished setting out two acres of strawberry vines, and these are totally ruined. Up in that sandy country the sand filled the air and drifted about like snow in a blizzard, The oats on high ground there are also much damaged. It was the hardest steady blow since the Galveston hurricane came this way in 1898. The disturbed weather conditions extended clear to the Rockies, and the weather wo bad here was mildand monotonous compared with what was experienced in many places; especially in the west and northwest. There hot waves and cold waves, rain-storms, duet-storms, sleet, snow and blizzards were the rule. In the Deadwood region, snow is two feet deep, and still falling.