My cousin Donald told me the story of how his family
came to live in, and then move from Canada in the 1930s. My grandparents had immigrated in 1928 and established
a farm near the town of Irricana, Alberta. My Uncle Randall came along
initially to help them get settled. He returned to Oregon but decided later to come back to Canada and farm
on his own.
Donald was born in the Irricana area in 1932. Uncle
Randall leased land in the Crossfield area north of Calgary and set out to
become fully Canadian. Unfortunately, in the summer of his first year a hail
storm, not uncommon in that region, destroyed his entire crop. My uncle decided
there and then that farming in Alberta was not for him and he moved his family
back to the United States.
This is really just a minor incident, both in terms of
the region in which it occurred and in the history of our family but it had
profound effect on the people involved as well as impacting future generations
of people. Donald ended up growing up and making his life in a country he was
not born into.
But it got me thinking about other members of our
family who migrated to far off places during their lifetimes. And others, as
well, in similar circumstances. Were they forced away from their homes because
of changes in natural conditions under which they lived and worked. In
particular, did a major, or even minor storm disrupt families to the point that
they had to changed their way of life or move.
Major
storms can disrupt activities, impact livelihoods and even kill people. It’s
not always the excessive rain that is the sole problem. Often, it’s the other
elements that come along with storms, such as tornadoes, floods and hail. Just
do a Google search for hail storms and you will come up with thousands of hits,
most of which will describe events in which very large hail stones thundered
down on unsuspecting people, damaging cars and homes, reducing crops to bent
straw and injuring people caught outside on what they thought was going to be a
nice day.
Big
storms containing hail commonly occur on hot spring or summer days when the
heat causes evaporation from the Earth’s surface and carries the moisture up into
the cold stratosphere. There the water vapour freezes and starts to fall. The continuous
updraft lifts the ice pellets again where they acquire another coat of freezing
water. The sequence can repeat several times resulting in vary large “stones”
before they can escape the rising air and fall to earth.
In
searching historical records, you will also find events similar to the 30 April
1888 storm that devastated the town of Moradabad in India. It struck at midday. Hail stones the size of oranges killed 230
people as well as thousands of farm animals that could not find protection.
Strong winds accompanying the storm toppled many buildings.
“A single storm might produce unexpected
results that can affect the outcome of a nation’s history. For example, on 13
April 1360, the army of King Edward III of England were marching against the
French at Chartres when a violent hailstorm was unleashed on them. Hundreds of
ill-protected men and horses died in the onslaught of hailstones reported to be
as large as pigeon’s eggs. Lightning apparently also struck and killed knights
in full battle armour. After this onslaught from Mother Nature, with his army
in tatters after the onslaught from nature, Edward agreed to a truce under
which he got a major portion of the country but was denied the French crown.”
(from Shepheard, 2018: Surviving Mother Nature’s
Tests, p. 111)
 |
Source: Barnard,
Bryn. (2003). Dangerous Planet: Natural
disasters that changed history. New York: Crown Publishers.
National
Geographic reported on an area called Roopkund Lake, also in India, in Uttarakhand
state in the Himalayas. In 1942 skeletal remains of hundreds of people were
found in the frozen water. For years, scientists and archaeologists debated
what had killed them all. The final conclusion was that they had been caught in
a terrible hail storm around 850 AD as they traversed the mountain range. All
had been killed or stunned by round objects from above that fractured skulls,
leaving them to die from their injuries or eventually from hypothermia in the
high mountain valley. Those objects must have been very large hail stones.
In
1986, a hail storm killed 100 people and injured at least 9,000 in Sichuan
province, in central China.
Golf
ball and baseball size hail stones are not uncommon. Many readers may have seen
such projectiles from the sky. The largest hail stone found so far measured 7
inches in diameter and fell during a storm on 22 June 2003 in Vivian, South
Dakota.
Hail
storms can cause significant damage if they happen in urban areas. Where I
live, a hail storm on 7 September 1991 caused $342 million in insurable damage.
Luckily that one missed out home but I do remember having to install a new roof
in 1982 after hail stones pound shingles off the old one.
As I
said, some storms have been only inconveniences. Others throughout history have been
deadly. And perhaps more than a few, such as the one that took out my uncles
crop in 1932, resulted in major changes to a family’s livelihood and history.
