Cited from Fire, Flood and Rape Wetherby 1660 – 1800 we have found something interesting.
“In 1650 a broadsheet was published, The strange and Dreadful Relation of a Horrible Tempest, which described how the ‘top of a strong oak containing one load of wood was carried for half a mile by a whirlwind’ The inhabitants of Wetherby were apparently terrified by ‘ a strange whirlwind of flame’ which caused great damage.”
This account is also in STRANGE NEWES FROM THE NORTH reported on ‘The five strange wonders in the north and west of England’, a seventeen century English report to members of Parliament. Printed for W. Thomas, 1659
It revealed that an “Exhalaton in the Air” had been sighted with two fiery pillars visible at noon over Marston Moor, near York, glimpsed as far away as Doncaster and Halifax
BUT
In The Works of John Dryden: Now First Collected in Eighteen Volumes, Volume 10 is the below passage which says “The strange and dreadful relation of a horrible tempest of thunder and lightning, and of strange apparitions in the air, accompanied with whirlwinds, gusts of hail and rain, which happened the 10th of June, 1680, at a place near Weatherby, in the county of York: with the account how the top of a strong oak, containing one load of wood, was taken off by a sheet of fire, wrapped in a whirlwind, and carried through the air, half a mile distant from the place,
John Dryden (1631-1700) was the leading writer of his day and a major cultural spokesman following the restoration of Charles II in 1660. His work includes political poems, satire, religious apologias, translations, critical essays and plays.
