Page:History of Iowa From the Earliest Times to the Beginning of the Twentieth Century Volume 3.djvu/213

 Where they seemed to come in violent collision, a dense mass of inky black vapor in violent commotion was forming into elongated trunks dropping down towards the earth, one of which reached and trailed upon the ground swaying back and forth, while the others bounded up and down as they swung along like the trunk of an elephant. The one reaching the ground seemed to be sweeping everything in its path—trees, fences, buildings and animals were raised into the vortex and hurled with terrific force to the earth. Cattle and horses crouched to the ground in terror and the hogs tried to bury themselves in straw stacks. Within and along the surface of the storm cloud there was an incessant play of electricity and fearful jagged bolts shot out of the white clouds on either side of the black mass from which the tongues depended. As seen from Pomeroy the sky was a fearful sight to behold. Clouds of inky blackness filled the entire west rolling and swaying in wild commotion. One cloud came from the northwest and united with another moving from the southwest and trailing beneath the place of collision was the black whirling column dragging upon the earth, from which came a continuous discharge of electricity.

The heavy and incessant roar of the approaching storm seemed to make the earth tremble. Persons just outside of its track, described the tornado as it struck the town as a rolling, writhing mass of a greenish blackness through which thousands of tongues of electric flame were darting. There was one wild crash and all was blackness and desolation where but a moment before Pomeroy stood. For a few moments every survivor seemed dazed and not a living form or a building could be seen in the ruins. The shrieks of the wounded and cries for help were heard on every side. Roused to a realization of the calamity that had suddenly come upon the town, the survivors hastened to rescue the wounded from the wrecks of their homes. For four hours they worked with the