From the published abstract of Dr. Hildreth's Meteorological Report for 1860, we copy the following account of the great storm of May 21st:
On Monday, the twenty-first day of May, the valley of Ohio was visited by one of the greatest storms or tornadoes ever experienced since the settlement of the country. Commencing west of the Mississippi river, it swept over a space not less than six or seven hundred miles in length by fifty or sixty in breadth, following generally the course of the Ohio river, or from the southwest to the northwest. I do not know the hour of its commencement, but it was at Louisville, Kentucky, by two o'clock P.M., at Cincinnati at half past tree, at Portsmouth by half past four, and at Marietta by half past five, traveling at the rate of eighty or one hundred miles an hours, farm exceeding in rapidity that of any railway train.
Its progress was marked by desolation and ruin, in the destruction of buildings, fences, trees and boats. Of the latter, many coal boats were sunk, and the navigators drowned. Several hundred lives were lost. Steamboats suffered less, as by their motive power they were able to gain a more sheltered position in the bends of the rivers. Louisville, Cincinnati and Portsmouth suffered more than any other towns, being larger and more exposed to the fury of the storm. Marietta suffered but little, the force of the tornado being spent before it reached that place.
In its full force it was attended with thunder and lightning, hail and torrents of rain pouring from the clouds more like a cataract than rain. The air was filled with leaves, fragments of branches and broken pieces of buildings, which with the mist produced a darkness equal to that of a cloudy night, requiring the aid of candles to go about the house. The violence of the storm at any one place did not last over half an hour.
At Marietta the day was cloudy with a brisk breeze from the southwest in the forenoon, in the afternoon it veered to the south. At 5 P.M. heavy dark clouds appeared in the west, with a good deal of commotion and some thunder. At half past five it began to rain a little. A quarter before six wind very violent from the southwest and not in gusts as in ordinary storms, lasting about twenty minutes.
As soon as the rain ceased, the sky or hazy clouds in the west and southwest put on deep orange or copper color, and after seven until dark, a brilliant red, like the rays of light in the aurora borealis. The night following was calm and clear. The mercury in the barometer in the forenoon was 29-10 and kept rising during the violence of the tempest, being at 29-15 at 5 P.M. and at 29-23 at 9 o'clock. At Wheeling, Virginia, 80 miles northeast of Marietta, it was only an ordinary gale, its force being spent before reaching there.
No similar tornado has visited the valley of the Ohio since Sunday, the 28th day of May, 1808. This struck Marietta about 4 P.M. with more violence than in 1860. There was little or no rain or thunder; several houses were unroofed, some blown down; with immense destruction of forest trees. It was greater in breadth and probably as extensive as that of this year. I was living in the town at the time, and witnessed its ravages. Brown's Cincinnati Almanac for the year 1810 contains the only printed account of it that I have seen; but probably the newspapers of that period noticed it, as there were nine or ten published then in Ohio.
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