CHRISTY: THE MID-ESSEX WIND-RUSH AND WHIRL-WIND. 143
that, just before the storm, the instrument stood at 28.90",
When the storm began, he found that it had fallen to 27.92".
This is the lowest point it is capable of recording : otherwise it
would probably have fallen much lower. After this, he went
out of doors to enquire what damage the storm had done. Re-
turning within eight or ten minutes, he found the instrument
then recording 28.95", having risen at least an inch (and probably
more) in the interval. The temperature of the room was 61°F.
Mr. Waters is a skilled and reliable observer, engaged in high-
class electrical work. Within half-an-hour or so after the storm
had passed, he had cycled to a place about one mile distant,
where people who had observed large black clouds whirling
round rapidly over Writtle asked him what had been happening
there.
Miss Mabel Usborne, of Roper's Hall (which suffered con-
siderable damage : see p. 139), has an excellent barograph, and
any record by it would have been of great interest; but, un-
fortunately, owing to alterations to the house being in progress,
the instrument had not been wound up for some time. Miss
Usborne has been good enough to ascertain that no other baro-
graph exists in Writtle. No observations on the force or the
velocity of the wind during the storm were obtained by anyone,
so far as I can learn.
After leaving the village of Writtle, the storm traversed, for
nearly a mile, a long, open, treeless field, where it left no trace
of its progress. It then reached "No .1 Bridge" (96ft.), on the
Chelmsford-Roxwell Road. Here the damage done was con-
siderable, considering the lowness of the site. Soms willow
trees beside the brook were blown over. A hundred yards
further, some roadside cottages were damaged, their chimney-
pots being shifted and many slates blown off. A number of
fragments of the latter still lie in the meadow opposite, no yards
distant, as paced by myself. In the same meadow, a medium-
sized oak was almost wholly wrecked (see Pl. III.), all its upper
branches being twisted off and deposited a hundred yards or so
to the right of the track of the storm. Several other trees close
adjacent were broken almost as badly, their branches strewing
the meadows thickly. Here, apparently, the storm was begin-
ning to widen somewhat; for a large oak, standing beside the
road to Chignal on ground quite fifty feet higher and some two.