The Virginia Gazette

PHILADELPHIA, June 23.

Extract of a letter from Lancaster county, June 20.

"I now sit down, under the shade of a friendly oak in the country, in order to give you some account of the late dreadful storm here, the effects of which I have taken pains to examine, having rode several miles for that purpose.

On Friday the 17th instant, about 2 o'clock P. M., the sky was overspread with flying clouds, apparently charged with heavy rain. The wind blew pretty fresh from the S. E. and thickened the clouds in the opposite quarter; so that about 4 o'clock there was darkness visible in the N. W. attended with a distant rumbling thunder, and now and then a small gleam of lightning, without any explosions. The clouds deepened more and more in the N. W. and there seemed to make a stand, being opposed by the wind from the opposite points. At half after 4 they assumed a frightful appearance, and at last formed a large crescent; with its concave side to the wind, and its inner edges tinged with a dusky violet colour. About 5 the wind veered about to the N. W. which immediately gave motion to the clouds, and discharged a most dreadful and destructive volley of hail. The storm then proceeded in a S. E. direction, at the rate of about 12 miles in an hour, attended with a most dreadful noise, something like the sounds of cannon, drums, and bells, mingled together.

The hailstones were of various dimensions, shapes, and forms; some measured 4 inches in circumference, some 2, whilst others were no larger than peas. As to their forms some were globular, some spheroidical, surrounded with small excrescences or knobs; some elliptical, and some irregular and smooth, like pieces of broken ice. Such as were globular were endued with so much elasticity that they rebounded from the ground like a tennis ball.

This storm divided into several branches, or veins (if I may use such terms) all which kept the same course, but bent their fury most towards the mountains, hills, and high lands. At Susquehannah the hail was as large as pigeons eggs, at Lancaster about the size of peas, at Dunker town, and in the valley, between the Welsh and Reading hills, they were as large as turkey eggs, in some other places still larger, and at Reading no hail appeared.

The damage done by this storm is very great; the county of Lancaster alone, it is thought, has suffered several thousand pounds. In many places there is not a single ear of wheat, rye, barley, &c. but what is cut off; and nothing left but the green straw, bruised and beat to pieces. It is melancholy to see fine plantations, and extensive fields, which a few days ago waved with luxuriant crops, now lying waste. Many able farmers, who expected to carry several hundred bushels of grain to market, will be obliged to buy bread for their families; and many of the poorer kind will be ruined, and reduced to beggary. All these people are now mowing their late promising and rich crops, as fodder for their cattle. Their distress is truly moving and alarming. At Dunker town, it is said (with what truth I cannot say) that cattle were killed by the hail; but certain it is that about Muddy creek, in this county, calves, pigs, fowls, &c. were killed in that settlement. The ground in the woods is as thick covered with green foliage, beaten from the trees, as it is with the fallen leaves in the month of October; and in many places the birds are found dead in woods and orchards. The N. W. side of the fruit trees are barked, and all the glass windows on that side, that were not secured by shutters, are demolished; and even the rails of fences visibly show the impressions of the hail upon them. In short, this storm threw every person who saw it into the most dreadful consternation, for the oldest man here never saw or heard of any thing like it."

JUNE 30.

A Gentleman in Lancaster county, who favoured his friend in this city with an account of the late dreadful hail storm, has since been pleased to furnish the following remarks; which, as they cannot fail of being acceptable to such of our readers as are of a speculative and philosophical turn, we are pleased with having an opportunity to insert them.

"Upon breaking several of the hailstones, such as were spherical were found to be composed of various orbs, or coats of ice, encompassing one another like the coats of an onion, which contained in the middle a transparent nucleus, about the size of a small pistol bullet. In some this nucleus was opake, with bright radiations issuing from it to the surface, like those discovered in breaking the sulphureous nodules, or globular pyrites, found in several parts of the county. Some were encompassed with fine iris, like the first shootings of frost in damp ground; and some were concreted into solid, but irregular, lumps of ice.

As the wind from the S. E. opposed the progress of the clouds, which began in the N. W. we may suppose that the first clouds, by being pressed behind by the thickening storm, and opposed in front by the wind, were by that means forced into the colder regions, and that there this nucleus was formed which congealed more and more as it fell through the water clouds, and so received different coats at different stages. Such hailstones as appeared under other forms were in all probability composed of a number of small ones, which not joined, and congealed together, in their passage through different clouds. The dreadful noise with which this storm approached proceeded, no doubt, from the striking and clashing together of the large stones in their fall.

How far this storm extended I have not been able to discover, but from the best information yet received it began somewhere about Shamokin, divided into different branches, all keeping pretty near a S. E. course, and destroying whole plantations on this side and that, without touching others which lay contiguous, and ended (at least with regard to its destructive fury) somewhere about Warwick furnace, in Chester county.

How awful are the dispensations of Providence! Jehovah rides in the whirlwind, and directs the storm. He commands the snow and hail, and they obey his word. Let us adore! let us tremble!

P. S. Much as I was surprised at the prodigious size of the above described hailstones, I was much more so in reading, a few days since, an account given by Dr. Hooke, in some of his philosophical papers, collected and published by Mr. Derham, that he had taken the dimensions and figures of several hailstones which fell in England, measuring 13 inches in circumference."