WINSTED — Sept. 14, 1882, started out as a fair day, with the Winsted Herald reporting only that it was “perhaps a bit too warm and humid for the third Thursday in the month.�
But that all changed as the sun went down over the developing town of Winchester when between 7 and 8 p.m. a storm started brewing overhead. The Herald described it as “destructive forces in cyclonic form.�
A fierce tornado touched down and passed through the southwest portion of the town, traveling west to east. The power of the storm was unimaginable at the time, leveling everything within its path.
“Cyclone Hill� is the old nickname marking the area of Orchard and Birdsall streets where the great cyclone aimed its path of destruction that evening.
Twisting winds cut a 300-foot-wide path of destruction through the Meekertown section of South Norfolk. From that point, the cyclone bounced into the sky, crossing over “Little Pond,� now known as Crystal Lake, before again touching down just west of the first bay in “Long Lake,� now Highland Lake.
The storm ripped through a barn on the Rockwell Farm and L.L. Blackman’s Slaughterhouse before smashing the Beach family’s wood-frame house and nine others on Orchard Street, Birdsall Street and Highland Park.
Residents reported feeling like they were hearing a heavy train approaching, and men and woman poured out into the streets crying for help. The Herald reported, “Trees as large as hogsheads were twisted off 6 feet above the ground. Seven huge trees in a group were twined into a gigantic coil.�
Most houses in the storm’s destructive path were annihilated, but no one was killed. Numerous injuries were reported. Winsted residents recovered from this historic weather event by bonding together to help each other. Following the storm, the Winsted Herald ran photographs of men and women scouring the wreckage of what had been their homes just days earlier.
