How's The Weather?

"Probably no'east to sou'west winds, varing to the southard and westard and eastard, and points between; high and low barometer, sweeping round from place to place, probable areas of rain, snow and hail and drought, succeeded or proceeded by earthquakes with thunder and lightning." ~ Mark Twain on weather forecasting

I have been reading Freaks of the Storm: From flying cows to Stealing Thunder, The World's Strangest True Weather Stories, by Randy Cerveny. It occurred to me that many of the stories were coming from the Midwest; I thought I would share a few for our Midwestern readers.

"Sept, 3 1970 three children in Coffeyville, Kansas, found a hailstone that was determined to be 17.25 inches in circumference and 5.6 inches in diameter."


"The world's record one-hour rainfall took place in two places - Holt, Missouri, and Kauai, Hawaii. Both locations recorded an extraordinary rainfall total of twelve inches in one hour. The Holt, Missouri, storm took place on June 22, 1957."

"Missouri,The Luckiest Man in the St Louis Tornado (May 27, 1896): A.M. Meintz became quite possibly the luckiest man in the ruined town following the terrible F5 tornado of 1896. Meintz, a wealthy and shrewd man, owned a two-story office building at the corner of Third Street and Missouri Avenue in East St. Louis. Prior to the tornado, he had decided to add an extra story to his building and was preparing to remove the roof so that the addition could be built. Then the great tornado hit, devastating the city and, for the most part, causing tremendous misery and destruction. For A.M. Meintz, however, the tornado was a blessing - it ripped off his building's roof but left the rest of the building untouched. And, equally fortunate, Meintz was one of the few men in East St. Louis who - prior to the twister -actually had purchased tornado insurance. So his "losses" on the roof were entirely covered and he saved the expense of roof demolition for his third-story addition."

More to come if you like these.