CITY SWEPT BY
A 75-MILE GALE.
SIX-HOUR AVERAGE VELOCITY
HERE IS 60 MILES.
BIG WIND RECORD BROKEN.
MUCH DAMAGE TO SIGNS, ROOFS
AND PLATE GLASS.
Trains on All Roads From Thirty
Minutes to Eight Hours Late.
Wire Communication Is
Also Hampered.
With seventy-five mile velocity registered at intervals and a sixty-mile average for the six hours from 6 o'clock a. m. until noon, the gale that swept Kansas city yesterday broke all local big wind records for the last twenty years.
According to Weather Observer P. Connor today will be as cold, possibly colder, than yesterday, although the wind will have fallen. There was further development of a low barometer last night between Davenport, Ia., and Chicago, Ill., which indicates that the wind may continue hurtling over the northern prairies to fill the vacuum left in the atmosphere in the Southeastern states. This will not so much affect Kansas and Missouri as the Atlantic seaboard, however, for the barometer is nearer normal here.
"We got our first hint of the coming high wind when the wire told us that the atmospheric pressure in Montana supported a column of mercury 30.68 inches high, while in Western Kansas it held up only 29.10 inches. The normal pressure is thirty inches, so there was a decided lack of an equilibrium, the heavy air of Montana and Canada rushing down here to fill the space left by the expansion of the air from the past three or four days of warm weather.
DAMAGE IN BUSINESS DISTRICT.
At times yesterday morning and forenoon the wind attained a velocity which was almost cyclonic. Signs, which had seemed securely fastened, were whirled from store fronts, small buildings in the suburbs were overturned, and glass fronts smashed in, the whole aggregating a loss which probably will reach several thousand dollars.People passing along the principal streets of the two Kansas Citys were subjected to multiple dangers, in which falling billboards, slippery streets and dangling live wires figured. Consequently the shopping was light, as the women stayed indoors.
When the gale reached its highest speed, near 10 o'clock, it became dangerous for a woman to step outside her door. Skirts and overcoats acted like sails, and many people of both sexes were bruised by being dashed against obstacles.
TRAINS TIED UP, WIRES DOWN.
Trains on all the railroads entering Kansas City were from thirty minutes to eight hours late yesterday. The engineer who brought his train in only thirty minutes or an hour late was complimented on his god work. The storm played havoc with the telegraph poles and lines, and the snow was banked over the tracks in places. Trains were tied up for hours in places waiting for orders.
Telegraph lines were down in all directions. Of the twenty-seven wires running out from the Union depot office of the Western Union, only three were in working order yesterday. These three wires were to Fort Scott, Atchison and St. Joseph.Trainmen long in the service said yesterday that it was the rawest storm experience they had ever encountered. Progress was slow and there was so much switching to be done because of the care necessary to exercise when running practically without orders.
At Birmingham, Mo., a few miles out of Kansas City, Burlington trains were tied up for some time because the telephone poles were down and across the track. That wasn't the worst part of it. A car of telephone poles was piled near the track at Birmingham. The wind picked these poles up and piled them on the track. It gave the trainmen plenty to do to clear away the debris.
