1895 Woodhaven Tornado

[user13]

This event has always intrigued me.

 

http://www.qgazette.com/news/2010-10-13/Front_Page/Queens_Tornado_Reminiscent_Of_1895_Twister.html

 

http://theboweryboys.blogspot.com/2011/05/tornado-tourism-curious-reaction-to.html

 

"One rather remarkable story of survival soon emerged -- the ten-year-old daughter of the village milkman was walking her cow back to the barn when the tornado picked up both her, the cow and the barn. The barn was torn to splinters and the cow thrown into Jamaica Bay. The girl, thankfully, was deposited into an onion patch, only slightly bruised."

[stormwarn]

Interesting story. I wonder what EF rating this tornado was. 

 

Love reading these old weather stories.

[uncle W]

1895 must have been a wild summer with the tornado and numerous hurricanes in August with one direct hit on western Long Island...

[Hoosier]

Interesting story. I wonder what EF rating this tornado was. 

 

Love reading these old weather stories.

 

 

Tom Grazulis rated it F2.

[bluewave]

Shortly before 4:00 P.M. on Saturday, July 13, 1895, a massive black cloud gathered over Cherry Hill near Hackensack in Bergen County and let loose a storm of hail and rain followed by a tornado funnel. Three local residents died, eleven were injured (six of whom had to be hospitalized), and most of the sixty or more dwellings in the village were damaged, some of them completely destroyed.

The general path and destructive characteristics of the tornado were described by a reporter for the New York World:

The path of the tornado is plainly marked from where it struck at Waldwick, in the northwestern corner of Bergen County, until it passed over the Palisades, twenty miles away. It landed in a great piece of woods near Walwick and mowed a wide swath through them, tearing the trees out by the roots. Rounding along in a southeasterly direction it passed the villages of Ridgewood and Spring Valley, levelling everything in its path. Then it swirled around Cherry Hill, where the greatest destruction was done, ten miles from the start.  Fences and crops were cut down for three miles more until Teaneck. The magnificent estate of William Walter Phelps was struck. A hundred trees were blown down and part of the greenhouses wrecked, but none of the buildings was damaged. The tornado sailed over the Palisades and passed above Harlem, just touching the city with its lower strata. It then dropped again with destructive force on Woodhaven [Long Island, where it claimed another life].
New York World, July 15, 1895



The Cherry Hill Tornado damaged or destroyed most of the houses in the village. The Cherry Hill Reformed Church is in the background of this photograph. (Courtesy of Mrs. Robert Dickie.) (From the collection of the Bergen County Historical Society)

Blacksmith John H. Jones witnessed the approach of the dense black cloud from the west at about 2:30 P.M. He was in the Reformed church at the time and was astonished at the dense blackness that descended on the village. He ran out into the road, found a heavy wind blowing and a strange-shaped cloud that seemed to be full of yellow light approaching from the northwest.

"I ran across the street to Friedman's Hotel," said Jones to a New York Times reporter, "and cried, 'Look out, there's a heavy gale coming.' I was so excited that I threw my tools on the floor, and went out to the door again to watch the storm. Just then something struck me on the head, and I was lifted up bodily and thrown into the ditch on the opposite side of the road.
"I did not lose consciousness, but crouched down in the ditch clinging to the grass. The big cloud that seemed full of yellow light spun round and round. Everything seemed to go round�dirt, bricks, wood; everything. I could see all that happened. I saw Friedman come flying out of the window of his hotel. I waited until there was a lull, and then rushed out on the railroad track, and lay there till the blow was over.
"As I lay flat on my stomach I glanced around, and saw that my own house had been blown from its foundations and tilted back like a rocking chair with half the hind part of the rockers torn off."
New York Times, July 15, 1895

[Rjay]

Pictures courtesy of William?

[uncle W]

1895 must have been a wild summer with the tornado and numerous hurricanes in August with one direct hit on western Long Island...

1895 had no hurricanes in August...I was thinking of 1893...1895 did have a torid heat wave around the first days of fall...

[scootmandu]

The New York Observer editions of July 14 and 15, 1895 have a very thorough account of this storm:

 

http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83030214/1895-07-14/ed-1/