1864 Viroqua, Wisconsin tornado disaster...
Item # 725587
July 03, 1865
NEW YORK TRIBUNE, July 3, 1865
* Viroqua, Vernon County, Wisconsin
* F4 tornado - Green Schoolhouse disaster
Near the bottom of the front page is a somewhat brief report with small heading: "Terrible Tornado In Wisconsin" with subhead. (see image)
Complete with 8 pages, uncut and untrimmed, nice condition.
background: The 1865 Viroqua tornado, which struck on the afternoon of June 28, remains one of the most harrowing displays of atmospheric violence in Wisconsin’s history, leaving a permanent scar on Vernon County. Estimated to be an F4 intensity storm, the tornado exhibited a terrifying multiple-vortex structure—described by witnesses as a main funnel with "parasitic" whirls—that leveled the southern third of Viroqua and obliterated the Green Schoolhouse, resulting in the deaths of a teacher and eight children. The sheer physical power of the vortex was staggering; it didn't just collapse timber structures but "pulverized" them into kindling, drove a pitchfork deep into a solid oak stump, and lofted heavy items like a 10-ton rock and a cast-iron stove several yards. With a death toll reaching at least 22 victims and injuring over 100, the disaster stands as a landmark event in early American meteorology, serving as a grim, early record of how supercell storms can produce localized, high-intensity suction spots that cause total destruction in their path.
* Viroqua, Vernon County, Wisconsin
* F4 tornado - Green Schoolhouse disaster
Near the bottom of the front page is a somewhat brief report with small heading: "Terrible Tornado In Wisconsin" with subhead. (see image)
Complete with 8 pages, uncut and untrimmed, nice condition.
background: The 1865 Viroqua tornado, which struck on the afternoon of June 28, remains one of the most harrowing displays of atmospheric violence in Wisconsin’s history, leaving a permanent scar on Vernon County. Estimated to be an F4 intensity storm, the tornado exhibited a terrifying multiple-vortex structure—described by witnesses as a main funnel with "parasitic" whirls—that leveled the southern third of Viroqua and obliterated the Green Schoolhouse, resulting in the deaths of a teacher and eight children. The sheer physical power of the vortex was staggering; it didn't just collapse timber structures but "pulverized" them into kindling, drove a pitchfork deep into a solid oak stump, and lofted heavy items like a 10-ton rock and a cast-iron stove several yards. With a death toll reaching at least 22 victims and injuring over 100, the disaster stands as a landmark event in early American meteorology, serving as a grim, early record of how supercell storms can produce localized, high-intensity suction spots that cause total destruction in their path.
Category: The 20th Century










