1889.] 



and May 1888 in the Boah and RuliWmnd. 



149 



of tlie Colloctor's house were " shorn away," and the massive masonry 

 portico dislodged by the wind, as well as that in which the roofs of 

 houses were lifted bodily off and carried to a distance, are hardly ex- 

 plicable except on the assumption of a powerful upward component iu 

 the wind's motion. 



Electeical Phenomena. 

 Except at Delhi, the existence of thunder and lightning in connexion 

 with the storm is not expressly mentioned; for by an oversight, no 

 direct inquiry was made regarding this point in my circular. I have 

 been privately informed, however, by a resident of Moradabad, that the 

 tornado commenced there also as a thunderstorm, and there can be little 

 doubt that as in almost every case investigated by Finley in the Unitod 

 States, all these storms wore accompanied by electrical disturbances. 

 No casualties from lightning are mentioned except the death of one 

 man in the Bareilly district. 



Hail. 



At every place without exception, from which anything like a full 

 account of the local storm has been received, hail is reported. In 

 many instances, the fall was light and the hailstones were small, not 

 larger than a " grown seed," that is, about as big as a pea, and similar to 

 what falls in ordinary hailstorms. In the Moradabad storm, however, the 

 quantity of hail and the velocity with which it fell seems to have been 

 enormous, though the size of the hailstones was not great, not larger 

 than a pigeon's egg. The hail which accompanied the same storm in 

 its passage over the Bareilly district later in the evening was of a similar 

 character, the average weight of the hailstones being about an ounce 

 (I chittack). The extraordinary thing about this hail was its fatal 

 effect upon human beings. It is difficult to believe that over 230 

 people could have been killed in one district and 16 in another by 

 showers of ice pellets no bigger than boys' marbles ; but such would 

 seem to have been undoubtedly the case. The Collector of Moradabad 

 reports that men caught in the open and without shelter were simply 

 " pounded to death" by the hail. The hailstones were therefore pro- 

 bably falling from such a height that they approached the ground with 

 a velocity in something approaching to the same order of magnitude 

 as that of a rifle bullet. It should be borne in mind, however, that 

 immediately before the storm, the temperature had been very high, and 

 that many, if not the majority, of the deaths due to it may have been 

 occasioned by the persons exposed to its fury being knocked down and 

 temporarily packed in ice. The shock to the system, especially of a 



