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128 years ago: Tornado hit 'Cyclone Hill'

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.

Lakeville Journal

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PUBLISHER'S NOTICE: Equal Housing Opportunity. All real estate advertised in this newspaper is subject to the Federal Fair Housing Act of 1966 revised March 12, 1989 which makes it illegal to advertise any preference, limitation, or discrimination based on race, color religion, sex, handicap or familial status or national origin or intention to make any such preference, limitation or discrimination. All residential property advertised in the State of Connecticut General Statutes 46a-64c which prohibit the making, printing or publishing or causing to be made, printed or published any notice, statement or advertisement with respect to the sale or:rental of a dwelling that indicates any preference, limitation or discrimination based on race, creed, color, national origin, ancestry, sex, marital status, age, lawful source of income, familial status, physical or mental disability or an intention to make any such preference, limitation or discrimination

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For nearly three decades, Doug Tallamy, a professor at the University of Delaware and co-founder of Homegrown National Park, has studied the intricate relationships between native plants, insects, birds and the ecosystems that sustain them. His books, including “Bringing Nature Home” and “Nature’s Best Hope,” have helped shift the conversation about conservation from something that happens primarily in parks and preserves to something ordinary people can practice on the land around them.

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