Abstract
Six years ago, in a weekly column devoted to remarkable “Historic Natural Events”, many records were given in NATURE of great hailstorms and damage done by them. There is an authentic record, for example, of a hailstone 17 inches in circumference and weighing 1J Ib. having fallen in Nebraska in July 1928 during a storm when the hailstones were 4 as large as grapefruit”. A hailstorm of this character is reported by The Times correspondent at Johannesburg to have occurred on February 1 in a native area of the Northern Transvaal when nineteen natives of the Barolong tribe were killed. The report states: “About Sin. of rain fell in a few minutes, and then came the hail, which consisted of jagged lumps of ice. In 30 minutes the hail was lying everywhere to a depth of 3ft., and in some cases the dead natives had to be dug out of it. There were many cattle killed, which the natives afterwards dragged away on sleighs. Whole crops were obliterated, and there are said to be over 1,000 native families afflicted in the area”.
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Destructive Hailstorm in the Transvaal. Nature 137, 219–220 (1936). https://doi.org/10.1038/137219d0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/137219d0