1894, May 11: Turtle and Alabaster in Ice Falls During a Hailstorm

In the May 1894 issue of the Monthly Weather Review, the editor of the magazine notes that on Friday, May 11, two odd hailstones were found. The first was a large hailstone that fell in Vicksburg, Mississippi, USA, that was found to have a piece of alabaster between one-half to three-quarters of an inch in size as its nucleus. A little later during the same storm, an even larger hailstone fell in Bovina, 8 miles from Vickburg. This hailstone was found to have a 6 inch by 8 inch gopher turtle frozen in the center!

        The editor of the magazine then noted that this all happened on the southern front of the same storm, and that there must have been some "special local whirls or gusts" that carried the heavy objects up into the clouds where they were coated with snow and ice until they fell.