...it was not until its center was over the eastern slope of the Alleghenies that its effects became destructive. There the storm was held up by winds from the southeast, the Lake region, and a storm from the northeast, the cold wind from the Lakes apparently wringing all the moisture out of the clouds.
Again this morning there had been a bright frost in the hollow below the dam, and the sun was not up long before storm clouds rolled in from the southeast. (McCullough p.19)
On May 31, the headwaters of the West Branch [of the Susquehanna River] were running twelve feet deeper than ever before.
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Everywhere on that day the rain is described as coming down not in drops, but in "sheets," in "cloudbursts," in "masses." (McMaster 211)
(some indefinable object: May 30, Johnstown; "The cloud looked square-shaped, like a house with its lower portion surrounded by a white cloud looking like steam, which seemed to rise from all around the main dark cloud," May 28, Kansas)
The mountain top is a broad plane and had never, within the recollection of any man, been visited by such a storm as that of the night of May 30th. (McMaster 222)*
*The nature of the Great Storm of 1889 is amply attested by the vivid descriptions of those who experienced it in Kansas and in Cambria County, and by the record evidence of its effects. I unnecessarily qualify the following with, “I did not experience the Great Storm personally, and; I am not a meteorologist, either professional or amateur":
In my sixty-six years of life, including twenty-some in Western Pennsylvania, which included seeing personally the effects of the "Storm of the Century" that caused the Johnstown Flood of 1977; in addition, experiencing first-hand six months later the Great Blizzard of 1978 in Boston; and in addition, having read a normal amount over the course of a life of comparable years of other storms in the news, the behavior of this storm is unique. I am unaware of any other storm that made such strange sensory impressions on people who experienced it, that was of such maniacal and enduring ferocity, and which formed over and visited its violence upon a landmass of an entire continent. The water deposited on Cambria County by this unique storm was added to the 20,000,000 tons of water ineffectually held back by a derelict earthen dam in Lake Conemaugh. -BH
But an hour or so later it started pouring and there seemed no end to it. "Sometime in the night," according to [Reverend] Chapman, "my wife asked if it were not raining very hard, and I being very sleepy, barely conscious of the extraordinary downpour simply answered, 'Yes,' and went to sleep, thinking no more of it until morning." (Ibid 34)
There were also “weird and unnatural occurrences” reported. The Heidenfelter family: a “rumbling, roaring sound” that seemed to come from some indefinable object not far from their house. It was then followed by a terrific downpour, which, according to Mrs. Heidenfelter, sounded as if a gigantic tank tub had opened at the bottom and all the water dumped out out at once.
“I never heard anything like it in my life. I wanted my husband to get up and see what the matter was, but it was dark and he could have done no good. In the morning, as soon as we could see, the fields were covered with water four or five feet deep . People say the noise we heard was a waterspout…
Apparently the storm did tear big holes in the ground near the Heidenfelter farm…other families close by the lake reported hearing sounds much like thunder but which they were certain were not thunder.” (Supra 88)
(See May 28 Kansas for similar description.)
At about nine the rain began again, gentle and quiet as earlier. (McCullough p.36)
By evening [rain] had spread westward as far as the Panhandle of West Virginia and northward to Cleveland. Winds from the ocean and wind from the south forced this storm into a small mountainous area of Pennsylvania where the Allegheny Mountain prevented it from going toward Pittsburgh.
When the rain started coming down about four o'clock, it was very fine and gentle, little more than a cold mist. Even so, no one welcomed it. (McCullough p.33)
The West Branch of the Susquehanna [River] was flooded by the afternoon of May 30, and the water continued to rise until Saturday, June 1.
The West Branch rises on the west side of the Alleghenies in northwestern Cambria County...The flood waters of the West Branch, Penn's Creek, and the Juniata drained the eastern slopes of the Alleghenies. In the west, the Clarion River, Red Bank Creek, and the Conemaugh rise highest in the Alleghenies and fall the fastest and steepest. A typical mountain stream, the Little Conemaugh, and its principal branch, the Stonycreek, wind through the mountains for twenty-five miles...At the confluence of the Little Conemaugh and the Stonycreek lies Johnstown, which in 1889 comprised a cluster of a dozen boroughs with a population of twenty-five thousand.
Beginning in eastern Kansas and Nebraska on May 28, [the great storm] moved eastward into Illinois, Michigan, Indiana, Kentucky, and Tennessee. Michigan and northern Indiana had snow; New York had frost.
A Times special from Emporia, Kan., reports that a disastrous tornado passed over Clements, Chase County, thirty-two miles west of here, about 4 o'clock [in the] afternoon...but the wires are all down, and no reliable information can be obtained.
John Pantle, conductor of a stock train, who arrived in Emporia at 9 o'clock last night, says he passed through Clements just after the storm, and in plain sight of part of its destruction doings. The cloud looked square-shaped, like a house with its lower portion surrounded by a white cloud looking like steam, which seemed to rise from all around the main dark cloud. As it came through the timber it cut a clean swath apparently destroying everything in its path, and when it struck the Cottonwood River it looked as if it was cutting a path through the river, piling up the water on both sides.
(See May 30, 10 P.M. for strikingly similar descriptions in Cambria County, Pennsylvania.)
For all the administration’s focus on transformational policies, it’s not forecasting an outburst of economic potential.
