No local photos but this was just along the border– same storm July 1938

The last week of July of 1938 the mother of all storms hit Carleton Place and area with walnut size hail riddling windows, greenhouses and schools. Storm clouds came out of the northwest and covering a strip approximately six miles in width, dumped a cascade of hail on Carleton Place and district at 4:15 in the afternoon causing thousands of dollars damage to property and grain crops.

Hundreds of panes of glass in manufacturing concerns, greenhouses and private residences were reported smashed in the survey made following the thunder storm. In the Carleton Place High School about 127 panes were blown out by the hail which fell for ten minutes in pellets the size of walnuts. The hail was accompanied by heavy winds which caused damage to farm crops. Lightning struck a hydro transformer in Carleton Place disrupting power facilities for two hours in the rural districts of Ramsay and Beckwith and the wind blew down big trees, fences and carried the roof of a barn 200 yards.

In Carleton Place, a large electric transformer was burned out and many wires were blown down, causing a shutdown of power for a couple of hours, for almost half the town. In the path of the storm many windows were smashed but the greatest damage in this connection was in Carleton Place. In the Hawthorn mill, Godwin’s photographic studio and Morris’ greenhouse had every pane of glass exposed to the west was destroyed.

Hilda Morris, along with her husband Merv, operated “M.P. Morris Flowers” from their McArthur Avenue home for over 25 years, opening in 1935. The first florist shop in Carleton Place, it survived a major set back in 1940 when an electrical storm demolished their greenhouse and all their plants, flowers and cuttings.-Carleton Place and Beckwith Heritage Museum

The damage in broken windows in the country was also very heavy. About a mile east of the town the high wind carried off the roof of one of the barns on the farm of W. E. McNeely on the eleventh line of Beckwith and distributed it over the fields for a distance of over 200 yards. All the wooden fences on this farm were also laid low by the force of the wind.
In the farm homes of Samuel and William Burns on the western edge of the town, over 40 windows were broken. So heavy was the rainfall that a section of Bridge street was flooded for a time with water four and five inches deep on the pavements, only the brief duration of the storm saving a number of stores being flooded. Just about a year ago a similar freakish storm tore the roof off the Queen’s Hotel and dropped it on Bridge street, completely burying a number of cars parked in the area.

Almonte Gazette August 1938

August 19, 1937 – 76 years ago this week. A giant rain and wind storm blew the tin roof right off the Queen’s Hotel and plunked it in the middle of Bridge Street- Carleton Place and Beckwith Heritage Museum