1878 Wallingford Tornado - The Wallingford Tornado

The Wallingford Tornado

In Wallingford, the day prior to the tornado was clear, and said to be "one of the loveliest of the season". At around 5 p.m. the sky began to get dark, and by 5:30 p.m. the air was very black. At around 6 p.m., the air at the surface was calm, but lightning began to fill the sky, and the clouds began moving at a very rapid pace, frightening some residents into shelter.

The tornado started as a waterspout over Community Lake, just west of town. It then moved through the center of town along Christian Street, damaging almost every structure as it went. The tornado tore houses from their foundations, throwing some more than 600 feet (180 meters). A receipt from the town was later found 65 miles (105 km) east in Peacedale, Rhode Island. Large trees were uprooted and snapped, and those that were still standing were stripped of small limbs and leaves. The Catholic Church was blown to bits, and heavy tombstones in the nearby cemetery were tossed around. The brand-new brick high school building was almost completely destroyed. The tornado's path through town was only two miles long, but the damage path was up to 600 feet (180 meters) wide.

More tornadic damage was reported in southern Durham and Killingworth, with some homes severely damaged, but there were some minor injuries, one young woman in Killingworth was injured by shards of glass from a breaking window. Some sources insist that the Wallingford tornado dissipated a few miles west of the town, and this was an entirely separate tornado, but without a modern damage survey it is impossible to tell. The parent storm finally moved out over the ocean around 8 PM.