A TERRIFIC HAIL STORM IN NORTHAMPTON YESTERDAY

This was clipped out of the newspaper by one of the Wright family, but they didn't include the date.  Has no real baring on genealogy but I thought I would transcribe it.

 A TERRIFIC HAIL STORM IN NORTHAMPTON YESTERDAY-Yesterday afternoon a little before three o'clock, a terrific hall storm accompanied by vivid lightning and heavy thunder passed over Northampton. Fortunately but little wind prevailed at the time and the hailstones fell with only a slight variation from the perpendicular. Had it been otherwise windows and blinds on the windward side of buildings must have suffered total destruction. For some time before the tempest burst upon us in its fury, an ominous roaring in the direction of the approaching cloud, indicated that hail were to be apprehended. A darkness almost like that of night overshadowed the landscape, and as the tempest, bore down from the hills into the valley, a gust of wind lashed the dust in the streets and plowed fields into smudder which filled the air like a fog. Before the advent of the hail however, the wind had a great measure subsided, and for some minutes after the hail commenced to fall only now and then a solitary stone made its appearance.  The first one observed by us struck in the road fronting our office and was larger than the largest sized hen's egg.

Thus far it had rained but a trifle, and we could hardly believe it to be a hail stone that we saw in the street, but soon a succession of others dispersed all doubts.  For the succeeding ten minutes the scene presented was equally grand and terrible.  Hailstones, solid, compact, round as an apple, and larger than any goose egg, measuring eight nine and often ten inches in circumference, came hissing through the air, bounding from the roofs pf buildings, clipping leaves and small branches from trees, and creating a din in their collision with the objects against which they struck that fairly drowned the thunder by which the tempest was accompanied.  Many of the larger ones either bounded to the height of a man's head when the fell, or crushed to powder, such was the velocity with which they were hurled from the back bosom of the cloud.

The quantity of hail that fell during the storm was not so large as often marks the passage of such tempests through this latitude; but the average size exceeded that of any similar storm in this vicinity, within the memory of the oldest inhabitant.