The pages of Reverend Joseph Felt's Annals of Salem, a two
volume collection of historical facts about the town that was
published in 1827 and 1828, are filled with fascinating tidbits
about weather extremes and other oddities in Salem's history. In
July 1773 lightning struck a tree on Gallows Hill and rendered
it the shape of a broom. In 1798 another bolt hit the ship
Martha in Salem Harbor, killing two sailors and wounding two
others. Salem experienced a violent hailstorm on August 1, 1815.
Some hailstones were five inches in circumference. The storm
lasted but a few minutes but broke thirty thousand panes of
glass in Salem alone. Every house in the town lost at least one
pane. A similar storm in 1819 destroyed 168 panes of glass in a
single home on Essex Street. Felt notes: "Human power quailed
before its violence." Snowstorms in 1829 and 1978 dumped at
least two feet of the white stuff on Salem in a single day. And
in what had been a normal July in 1804, snow fell one day in
Salem and surrounding towns. V