Sometimes the tornado acts like an enormous scoop, catching up every movable thing and sweeping it miles away:  and again it becomes a depositor, as if, tired of carrying so much dead weight, it dumped it upon the earth preparatory to grabbing up a new cargo.  These effects are particularly noticeable in the tornado that goes by jumps.  When it strikes and absorbs a mass of debris it seems to spring up again like a projectile that grazes the surface.  For a space there will be a very high wind and some damage, but no such disaster as the tornado has previously wrought.  Out of the clouds will come occasional heavy missiles and deluges of water.  Then down goes the tornado again crashing and scattering by its own force and adding to its destructive power by a battery of timbers and other objects brought along from the previous impact.  Relieved of these masses, it again gathers up miscellaneous movables and repeats its previous operation.

The force with which these objects strike is best seen when they fall outside of the tornado’s path, since the work done by the missile is not then disturbed by the general destructive force of the storm.  Thus, near Racine, Wis., I have known an ordinary fence rail, slightly sharpened on one end, to be driven against a young tree like a spear and pierce it several feet.  The velocity of the rail must have been something enormous, or otherwise the rail would have glanced from such a round and elastic object.

Many of the settlers in the tornado districts of Southern Minnesota, Iowa, Kansas, and Nebraska excavate a deep cellar beneath their houses and cover it with heavy timbers as a place of refuge for their families when a tornado threatens to strike them.  While these dugouts are usually effective, they are not always so.  There have been instances where families having only time to descend and not time enough to close the trap door have been exposed to the storm’s full fury by the tornado getting into the opening and lifting off the whole roof after having first swept away the house above.  Another pathetic case resulted in the death of a whole family by an extraordinary freak of the tornado.  The storm first struck a large pond and swept up all the water in it.  Its next plunge deposited this water on one of these dugouts, and the family were drowned like chipmunks in a hole.

Some of the western tornadoes are accompanied by electrical manifestations to an extent that has originated a belief in electricity as their cause.  These disturbances are very marked in some cases, while in others they have not been noticed.  In one tornado in Central Illinois electricity played very peculiar antics not only in the tornado’s track, but also at some distance from it.  In the ruined houses all the iron work was found to have been strongly magnetized, so that pokers, flatirons and other metal objects were found adhering to each other.  Just off the tornado’s track the same effects were noticed, and several persons experienced sharp electric shocks during the passage of the storm.  Afterward it was found that the magnetic influence was so strong that clocks and watches were stopped and rendered wholly useless.