“This storm originated over the town of Carlisle, Pa., on the 17th of June, 1843. I entered it just as it was forming. The nucleus cloud was just spreading out as I entered the vortex unsuspectingly. I was hurled into it so quickly that I had no opportunity of viewing the surroundings outside, and must therefore confine this relation to its internal action. On entering it the motions of the air swung the balloon to and fro and around in a circle, and a dismal, howling noise accompanied the unpleasant and sickening motion, and in a few minutes thereafter was heard the falling of heavy rain below, resembling in sound a cataract. The color of the cloud internally was of a milky hue, somewhat like a dense body of steam in the open air, and the cold was so sharp that my beard became bushy with hoar frost. As there were no electric explosions in this storm during my incarceration, it might have been borne comfortably enough but for the seasickness occasioned by the agitated air-storm. Still, I could hear and see, and even smell, everything close by and around. Little pellets of snow (with an icy nucleus when broken) were pattering profusely around me in promiscuous and confused disorder, and slight blasts of wind seemed occasionally to penetrate this cloud laterally, notwithstanding there was an upmoving column of wind all the while. This upmoving stream would carry the balloon up to a point in the upper clouds, where its force was expended by the outspreading of its vapor, whence the balloon would be thrown outward, fall down some distance, then be drawn into the vortex, again be carried upward to perform the same revolution, until I had gone through the cold furnace seven or eight times; and all this time the smell of sulphur, or what is now termed ozone, was perceptible, and I was sweating profusely from some cause unknown to me, unless it was from undue excitement. The last time of descent in this cloud brought the balloon through its base, where, instead of pellets of snow, there was encountered a drenching rain, with which I came into a clear field, and the storm passed on.” As might be expected the hailstones vary much in form, size and quantity. If by chance any stones become slightly flattened they ride level in the ascending current, and hence by aggelation grow most rapidly on the periphery which is a line of diminished pressure. At times they are more or less oval, and again they appear as fragments of considerable masses of ice, broken perhaps by collision in the violent parts of the tornado tube. Their great variety in shape and bulk may be appreciated from the following extracts taken from the records of the Signal Service: [Illustration: FIG. 55.—VERTICAL SECTION OF A HAIL TORNADO.]