THE 
ESSEX NATURALIST: 
BFING THE 
3ournaf of ff?e (Sseer Stefb Cfu6. 
VOLUME XIX. 
A WHIRLWIND AND WIND-RUSH AT GOS- 
FIELD ON 26th JULY igi8. 
By A. C. W. LOWE, M.A., F.L.S. 
(With one Illustration.) 
[Read 30 th November 1918.] 
FEW months ago, Mr. Miller Christy described in these 
il pages a remarkable whirlwind and wind-rush which 
occurred in the parish of Writtle, on 27th October 1916, tearing 
violently across the face of the country for nearly five miles, 
causing most serious damage to thousands of trees and to scores 
of houses and other buildings. 1 
I now describe a wind-rush, of exactly the same kind, but 
of smaller dimensions and less destructive effect, which occurred 
here (Gosfield Hall, near Halstead) at 6 p.m., G.M.T. (=7 p.m. 
clock time), on Friday, 26th July 1918. Such phenomena, 
though not of extreme rarity, are, nevertheless, very unusual ; 
and, when they occur, their principal features should, in my 
opinion, always be recorded in detail and v r ith the greatest 
possible accuracy." I was myself an actual witness of the 
progress of this particular storm for the greater part of its course. 
I have never before seen anything of the same nature, and I 
found the sight it afforded to be extremely impressive. More¬ 
over, I have since been over the course followed by the storm 
and have observed carefully the effects produced by it. The 
more remarkable of these I have noted on the accompanying 
chart (fig. 1), copied largely from the 25-inch map of the Ordnance 
Survey (xvi., 6 and 11). 2 
1 See Essex Naturalist, xvii., pp. 136-145 (1918b 
2 [It is fortunate that this remarkable phenomenon should have been both witnessed and 
described so fully by Mr. Lowe, who is a man of education and is obviously extremely 
observant. As a rule, in such cases, all the evidence one can get is that of uneducated 
country people, whose powers of observation are limited and their powers of description 
almost non existent. Consequently their statements are usually more tantalising than 
helpful.— Ed.] 
