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Blue Mound Township History
Weather
McLean County, Illinois

(Transcribed by: Teri Moncelle Colglazier)

Old settlers tell of a terrible tornado which swept over the town in the summer, which did much damage and caused more fright. The wind had blown from the east all day, and at night came back from the west in a terrible gale. For years, the people at the East had heard heart-rending stories of the awful winds on these treeless prairies. This was the first experience these settlers had after leaving their Eastern homes, and some of them fully expected, when the "storm center" should fairly get "onto" them, to see their cook-stoves going skyward, their cattle's limbs flying promiscuously through the firmament, and the fleeces blown clean off the sheep, going to re-enforce the clouds. The damage was comparatively light, but the fright was enormous. They have now lived here long enough to know that we really have no more wind here than they do in Ohio or New York. We now hear the stories coming from Kansas and Nebraska that Eastern folks heard twenty-five years ago from Illinois. [The History of McLean County, Illinois, Chicago: W. LeBaron Jr. & Co., 1879]

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