Marvellous Storm In Lancashire and Cheshire in 1662

July 30th 1662 was a very stormy and tempestuous day in many parts of Cheshire and Lancashire.  At Ormskirk there was such a storm of hail as brake the glass windows, and did much hurt to the corn. Mr Heywood measured an hail stone after some of it was wasted, and found it four inches about; others being thought larger.  The same day in the afternoon, in the village of Maxfield in Cheshire, there arose a great pillar of smoke, in
height like a steeple and judged twenty yards broad, which, went along the ground six or seven miles, levelling all in the way; it threw down fences and stone walls, and carried the stones a great distance from their places, but happening on moorish ground uninhabited it did the less hurt.  The terrible noise it made so affrighted the cattle that they ran away, and were thereby preserved.  It passed over a corn field, and laid all as even with the ground as if it had been trodden down with feet. It went through a wood and turned up above a hundred trees by the roots.  Coming into a field full of cocks of hay ready to be carried in, it swept all away, so that scarce a handful of it
could afterwards be found, only it left a big tree behind in the middle of the field, which it had brought from some other place.  From the forest of Maxfield it went up by a town called Taxal and thence to Waily Bridge, where, and nowhere else, it overthrew a house or two, yet the people within them received not much hurt, but the timber was carried away nobody knew wither.  From thence it went up the hills into Derbyshire and so vanished.

This account was given by Mr Hurst, minister of Taxal, who had it from an eye-witness

Jean

Sorry to have duplicated your thread.. Either I did not read your original or my memory is failing me; or perhaps both.

This has just reminded me of when I saw my first Funnel Cloud back in 2008, recent history notably but all the same I still think to this day I was the only person in the entire area to have seen it, let alone photograph/video it on camera.

Came out from a Cell that vectored from Manchester and was dissipating over the Peaks, saw on the RADAR that a hook echo was forming over the locality and saw outside briefly through the rain-wrap that rotation was taking place right above Whaley and ending up towards Ladder Hill before its rotation was cut-off. Not quite 'Tornado-Alley' footage, but not something you see everyday either. Sent the pics to the Advertiser but they neither got back to me or ran the story, so much for 'local news' lol.

Green_Gentleman attached the following image(s):

Thanks**. I've tried to bring out the funnel structure in the past using GIMP for contrast editing, nothing as good as this however. Much appreciated.

Edited by user 27 March 2011 22:34:53(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified