Tornadoes drink lakes

It's hard to believe, but it was real: a "fish" and "sausage" rain fell from the sky. In Chelyabinsk there were "white nights", fireballs and yellow snow.  

Chelyabinsk meteorologists helped us make this series.  Collecting information about unusual and rare natural phenomena began  Valery Borisovich Kalishev. He worked for many years as a leading meteorologist of the Chelyabinsk region, was the director of the hydrometeorological observatory. Archival materials were examined by Irina Egurnaya. And in the old documents I found a lot of reports about terrible natural disasters.

Typhoon "Gorynych" stopped the train

On May 8, 1909, a destructive tornado swept over Chelyabinsk.  Local meteorologist Vorontsovsky collected all the eyewitness accounts, described in detail the event of that day in local newspapers.

The tornado literally grew before our eyes, in just a minute it turned into a huge funnel in a shaggy cap. She was spinning madly and sucking in the waters of Smolino Lake. The water was dragged upward by gravity, along with the bottom silt, as if into a pipe. Already on the shore she collapsed. Immediately it began to rain with hail and together with water, stones, fish, clods of dirt, boards, junk fell from above. Then apparently the tornado "went" towards the Mound. Because on the same day, a black, screw-like spinning pillar flew into the village of Mishkino.

At that time, a peasant was driving down the street in a cart with two children. He was lifted into the air and thrown with terrible force through the window of a neighboring hut. He knocked out the frame with his head and flew into the room like a bullet. His children were thrown under the rubble of this house and, fortunately, covered from above with a roof brought from somewhere. The shoemaker, who was sitting peacefully at work at that time, suddenly two huge pieces of sugar fly in through the shattered window. Each one is the size of a head. In another place, a sausage maker had bundles of sausage suspended from the ceiling. The wind picked up the entire roof along with the "goods" and, dragging two streets, threw it onto the square. That was the joy of the local mongrels, who immediately began to pull apart the sausage that had fallen from the sky.

And how he scared the regulars of the pub! A dead man from a rural cemetery was thrown right onto the porch by the wind. One of the drunks was so scared that he jumped into the well and drowned.

A tornado swept through the southern part of the village. Roofs were torn off houses and shops and carried away for a long distance, two or three log shops were swept to the ground. In some places, hail the size of a chicken egg fell from the clouds. Hailstones killed chickens and geese and drove dogs into a frenzy. The wind crumpled the roofing iron like ordinary paper. Moreover, he stopped a freight train approaching the station and even moved it back! And a small lake was emptied to the bottom by a tornado. Together with the water, he sucked in hundreds of domestic geese and ducks. The day after the disaster, they were found with their heads and paws turned away. Moreover, the tornado literally "plucked" the birds: they were without feathers.

The local population sorted out the rubble for a long time, counted the losses.And for the incredible strength and devastation, this element was dubbed the typhoon "Gorynych".  Mishkin residents were able to recover from the damage caused only by the beginning of the First World War.

In Tyubuk, a tornado destroyed a century-old pine forest

On July 27, 1971, in the evening, it began to rain with a thunderstorm over the Tube. Suddenly, at the seventh hour, residents heard a powerful rumble, as if an airplane was approaching. Soon a spinning column of dust with fragments of slate, boards, and trees appeared over the village. In 10-15 minutes, he walked through a third of the Tube: all the houses in this part were left without roofs. And on the outskirts, the owner of the hut was dragged into the street along with the bed on which he was lying. His neighbors' house was completely destroyed. A pine forest also fell into the destruction zone. Powerful centuries-old trees were uprooted or broken into several parts. A tornado tore off a reinforced concrete floor from a transformer substation. The slab, weighing almost two tons, was thrown 10 meters away.

When everything calmed down, a picture of destruction became visible. The trail of the tornado was no more than 300 meters wide, and stretched for 10 kilometers.

The weather station did not see the Kopeysky squall

Saturday, August 12, 1978 turned out to be hot and sunny. People rushed to the lakes. By evening, a huge thundercloud appeared in the vicinity of the city. She moved so fast that many vacationers simply did not have time to find shelter.

- As soon as I managed to tie the boat to the reeds, I was immediately covered by a black wall, amateur fisherman Philip Philimendrikov recalled later. The rain was pouring down like a bucket, it became completely dark, it was thundering and rumbling all around.

And at this time, something unimaginable was happening in Kopeisk itself. In just fifteen minutes, windows were smashed to smithereens in houses, large trees fell, poles broke, slate was torn off roofs by the wind. Even the lampposts were turned in the opposite direction.  All this was accompanied by a strong rumble, which is very typical for tornadoes.

Notable,  that the nearest weather station noted a wind of 14 meters per second. A little more than usual! At that time, fences and sheds were flying in Kopeisk.

And when everything went quiet over Lake Shelyugino, where Philip Philimendrikov was fishing, a ball lightning appeared:  

- I straightened up, looked at the west bank and froze, he said. - Not far from me, about 200 meters above the water, a glowing ball, slightly larger than a football, was flying. It flew not straight, but with twisting turns in the direction from west to east. After a few moments he flew behind the big reeds and I lost sight of him.