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22 September 1886
The storm: The county fair held in 1886 is remembered in the county history not for anything exhibited at it but for the weather that hit it. About fifteen minutes after two o'clock on the afternoon of Wednesday 22 September 1886, a hailstorm coming from a point a little east of north broke over the north central part of the county. In less than five minutes the ground was white with hailstones from the size of a walnut to that of a hen's egg, and even larger; some picked up off the streets in South Bend measured eleven inches in circumference. The storm was about three miles wide and extended about seven miles south of the city, and in any one place it lasted about seven minutes.
On the grounds: Howard's account of the fairground itself is the vivid line: on the county fair grounds, horses were struck, and ran, with buggies, wagons and carriages, in every direction. The people, crowded all over the grounds, were wild with fright; but, happily, no one was seriously injured. In the city the damage was glass: window glass was broken in about every house in South Bend, the churches lost the stained glass on their north sides, and the Oliver Chilled Plow works and the Studebaker works each suffered a loss of from ten to twelve thousand lights, that is, panes. A county fair is the one week a rural county gathers its horses, its vehicles and its whole population in one open field, and the 1886 storm is the record of what that concentration risked before weather forecasting existed to warn it. The fair's own premium lists for that year, if any were printed, no source supplies; the storm is what 1886 left behind.
Sources:
- Howard, A History of St. Joseph County, Indiana (1907), "Hailstorm, Flood and Tornado" (the date and hour, the stone sizes and the eleven inch measurement, the three mile width and seven mile run, the horses and vehicles on the fair grounds, no one seriously injured, the broken glass across the city, the Oliver and Studebaker losses of ten to twelve thousand lights each).