WEATHER: Torrents & Twisters

Down from the Canadian Rockies across the central U. S. last week swept steady frigid winds that drove temperatures far below normal, made moisture condense like breath on a cold windshield. Results:

In Iowa, Wisconsin, Nebraska, and Illinois, blizzards that nipped early crops, tore down telephone wires, blocked roads; in Chicago, a 9-inch snowfall in one day.

In the South, where freakish twisters were still coursing along the Alabama-Mississippi boundary and last week killed ten people and wrecked hundreds of houses, driving rains brought most creeks and rivers to flood stage, some beyond. Onto Whitestone Mountain in northwest Georgia descended a mighty cloudburst that sounded like Niagara, rushed down to destroy the tiny quarry town of Whitestone (pop. 200), where a family of 13 were drowned in one house.