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WATER-SPOUTS ON THE YORKSHIRE WOLDS. 
By Rev. E. Maule Co eg, M.A., F.G.S. 
(Read Nov. 28, 1900.) 
T is well known that the dales of the Yorkshire Wolds 
| are dry valleys—that is to say, no running water is, 
as a rule, found in them. Yet I have known two 
instances in which they contained broad, rushing rivers. 
The first occurred on Saturday, June 9, 1888. I had just 
started to walk to Sledmere, when I noticed a dense black 
cloud hanging over the road in front, halfway between 
Fimber Station and Sledmere. I thought it best to turn 
back, and fortunate it was that I did so, for a little before noon 
the cloud burst and sheets of water descended at Towthorpe. 
On the sides of the sloping fields the innumerable little 
streams converged into larger streams, carrying away the 
surface soil and hollowing out deep trenches in the broken 
chalk subsoil. Many hundreds of tons of material were 
quickly carried away to the dale bottom, and enormous 
damage was done to the farm. But the most curious 
feature was the appearance of a river, sixty feet wide and 
a foot in depth, rushing down York Dale to Fimber Station, 
a distance of two miles. The volume of water discharged 
from the cloud must have been truly immense. It turned 
out afterwards that an observer at Cowlam had noticed 
three black columns, which he took to be water-spouts, 
advancing towards the Wolds from the sea, and then making 
for the spot where the clouds burst. 
I believe Langtoft suffered at the same time, but not so 
badly as on Sunday, July 3, 1892, which was the occasion 
of my second experience. Between five and six p.m. on that 
day a water-spout burst at North Field Farm, Huggate, 
tearing up deep channels on the dale sides as before, and 
piling up the debris in the hollow at the bottom. Not long 
afterwards a river rushed down the dales, a distance of four 
miles, to the south side of Wetwang, covering the road to 
Huggate to a depth of over two feet, extending in breadth to no 
less than seventy yards. The noise of the chalk pebbles rolling 
along in its course could be distinctly heard in the village a 
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