Heavy Rains Ruin $10,000 Crops at State Hospital, 1914

From the Thursday, July 23, 1914, issue of the High Point Review

Raleigh—The recent storm which broke all records for downpour of rain, barring July 30, 1888, wrought its worst destruction upon grounds of the state hospital and the estimate of losses there is $10,000.

Walnut creek, which has never been seen so badly overflowed, backed upon the hospital grounds and flooded portions of the crops. The worst damage was to the ground. The hospital had sowed its lands in peas that had reached a growth nearly large enough to protect the ground from breaking away. But it lacked a little and the young crop went rushing to the creek basin with great furrows cut in a hundred places.

The center of the city appears to Raleigh people to have been the center of the storm, but it wasn’t. The superintendent of the hospital, Dr. Albert Anderson, believes that the cloud burst immediately over the grounds on which the hospital stands. Though the approach to the institution is a macadam road, the granite has been washed away and the driveway is almost impassable.

The hospital had great crop prospects. It has rarely had so much to hope for from green fields. But in all its history it has had no flood that approached this one. Dr. Anderson does not see how his loss can be less than $10,000 and there is no indemnity. It is a total disaster. It represents the food for the institution, a crop raised by its own labor.

Being the meeting place of two heavy storm clouds Raleigh and this whole section experienced the heaviest rainfall with one exception that has fallen during all the history of the weather bureau here and with the rain there were terrific electrical disturbances, the floods doing damage in many parts of the city and the lightning putting the power and lighting wires out of commission for a considerable time. The rainfall was 3.04 inches within 55 minutes from 3:50 to 4:45.