THE KANSAS CITY TORNADO, MAY 13, 1883. 121 
Highest temperature, 90°, May 2d. Lowest temperature, 36°, April ist. 
Highest barometer, 29.320, May nth, reduced 30.304. Lowest barometer, 
28.190, April 22d, reduced 29.125. 
THE KANSAS CITY TORNADO, MAY 13, 1883. 
On Sunday, May 13th, at least four different tornadoes originated in eastern 
Kansas and swept across a greater or less portion of the State of Missouri, viz : 
one near Troy, in Doniphan County, crossing into Andrew County, Missouri, 
and extending eastwardly a {&^ miles; a second in Wyandotte County above this 
city and sweeping across the Missouri River into Clay County, and so on east- 
wardly along the H. & St. Jo. R.R. as far as Macon City, the third also originat- 
ing in Wyandotte County and confining its ravages mainly to this city, as des- 
cribed below, and a fourth starting near Columbus, in Cherokee County, and 
passing directly into Jasj>er County, Mo., and doing immense damage in that 
and the adjoining county northeast 
That in which we are most interested occurred at about 5 o'clock P. M., and 
swept across this city from southwest to northeast, destroying nearly two hundred 
buildings of all kinds and causing a loss of property amounting to nearly $200,000. 
Its most remarkable and unaccountable feature was the exceedingly slight amount 
of bodily injury done to our citizens. Scores of dwellings were unroofed — many 
of them utterly demolished — in an instant, and but two lives were lost and only 
a very few persons wounded. 
Owing to our absence from the city at the time of the occurrence, we cannot 
give our personal experience or observations, but must be content to narrate 
those of others, beginning with an extract from the Daily Journal : 
"The cool weather on Saturday was followed by a heavy fall of rain on Sat- 
urday night and Sunday morning. During the early part of Sunday the weather 
grew rapidly warmer, and the sultry atmosphere and the peculiar movements and 
appearance of the clouds indicated that vigorous contest of opposing warm and 
cold currents which always portends a storm of more or less seriousness. 
"The writer was an observer of the gradual concentration of the mighty 
forces of nature from the time the first indications were noticeable in the south- 
west, west and northwest until the storm broke with such irresistible force over a 
portion of our city. 
" Between 3 and 4 o'clock the appearance of all the western horizon as far 
as the eye could see from south to north was that of remarkable counter move- 
ments of clouds. The upper stratum of clouds moved counter to the lower 
stratum with an irregular and uncertain movement, as if they were contending 
for the mastery. About 4 o'clock the darkest point in the storm clouds was in 
the northward, and from that point at once appeared what John P. Finley, of 
the United States Signal Corps, calls a tornado, but what our people will be 
quite willing to call a cyclone. Its appearance was not to be mistaken. A vast 
