The Hailstorm of July 14, 1894. 
3 l 
out to sea; and though a portion of it covered Little 
Compton, and the southern shore of Massachusetts to the 
eastward, no report of any damage there has been received. 
Hail fell to the westward in Jamestown as the storm 
advanced, but with noting like the severity it showed in 
Newport. 
The remarkable devastation accomplished by this short 
tempesf was mainly due to the size and hardness of the 
hailstones, and incidentally to the velocity of the wind which 
hurled them with such force against opposing objects. In 
all hailstorms, skylights and greenhouses suffer greatly, but 
on this occasion the stones were shot nearly horizontally 
with extraordinary impetuosity, which accounts for the 
destruction of so many windows in buildings. Not infre¬ 
quently the stones were forced through the window, across 
the room, and out at the opposite window. Hailstones and 
large fragments of window glass were shot with such violence 
across the Reading Room of the Redwood Library (a dis¬ 
tance of 54 feet) that for the space of five or more minutes 
passage across the room was absolutely impossible. 
An examination of the hailstones after the storm showed 
why they had proved so destructive. Many of them meas¬ 
ured between seven and eight inches in circumference. One 
stone, weighed by Mr. Lommel, gave a weight of four and 
a quarter ounces. Some reports stated that stones weighing 
seventeen ounces had been found, but this statement is 
probably incorrect 
In form the stones were generally spherical, or egg- 
shaped. But among them not a few were modeled some¬ 
what like a sea-urchin — domed above and hollowed beneath 
— with more or less crenulated edges. Structurally they were 
composed of alternating layers of hard and softer ice ; but 
as a whole they were remarkably hard, the harder portions 
being as dense as artificial ice. Many of the hailstones 
when broken or melted showed a nucleus of sand grains or 
small pebbles. This is not unusual in hailstones formed in 
active thunderstorms, some of the sand or gravel swept up 
