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electricity. Some rain fell on Sabbath morning, but it was not 

 till three o'clock in the afternoon that the downpour commenced 

 in right earnest. At that hour there was a sharp sliower, fol- 

 lowed, after a brief cessation, by a tremendous torrent of rain, 

 accompanied by numerous peals of thunder and flashes of lights 

 ning, and shortly after by a high wind, the noise of which almost 

 drowned the sound of the thunder, and the sky at the same time 

 grew so dark that it was hardly possible to see to read. The 

 drains being insuificient to carry olf the great body of water whicli 

 fell in so sliort a space of time, many of the streets and roadways of 

 the to^vn and suburbs, and of the areas and cellars in low-lying parts, 

 were flooded to a considerable depth. The storm appears to have 

 been more severely felt on the shore of the Solway Firth, par- 

 ticularly in the neiglibourhood of the Brow Well, than further 

 inland. The following description, given in the Standard news- 

 paper at the time, is wortliy of being quoted : — " Before the 

 heaviest of tlie rainfall, a hurricane was observed suddenly to 

 spring up, apparently about Southerness Point, and drive masses 

 of cloud before it in the direction of Silloth. Tlie sight was one 

 of terrific grandeur, so rapidly did the clouds speed along, and so 

 tumultuously did they roll over each other. Wlien near to Silloth, 

 the storm seemed suddenly to veer, and swept across the channel 

 and inland in a north-westerly direction. The roar of the wind 

 was heard a considerable time before its force could be felt, and 

 then the few persons wlio were out found it impossible to stand 

 against it, and were fain to lay themselves prostrate. The rare 

 phenomenon of a water spout was also witnessed. The water was 

 lashed up into a tapering column, described to us as havinc been 

 higher than the Midsteeple of Dumfries, and tbis careered along 

 in a threatening manner, but it gradually subsided without any 

 mischievous result, finally disappearing a little to the north of 

 Ladyland, a farm about two miles from Clarencefield." 



The wettest month of the year was September, with a fall of 

 5-79 in., being 3-5 in. above the average. The driest month was 

 June, when the total fall was only 0-77 in. There were 224 

 days on which precipitation took place in one form or other, but 

 on 25 of these the fall did not exceed one hundredth of an inch. 

 There were 18 on which snow fell, and 206 rain— total rainfall 

 for the year, 40-63 in. ; mean of 26 years at Cargen, as reported 

 by Mr Dudgeon, 44-85 in. Tlie average rainfall for Dumfries, 

 according to a table given in Sir John Herschell's article on 



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