Hampton Beach was really starting to thrive in 1898, and it showed on Independence Day. The area was booming with residents and tourists.
“A lot of activity. There were people out on boats on the water, the trolley would run every 30 minutes from Exeter to the beach, so we were having thousands and thousands of people here that day,” said Betty Moore, from the Hampton Historical Society.
Hundreds of people had gathered at one of the big events that afternoon: a film being shown at Frank Beckman's skating rink. That rink would soon be the site of great devastation.
Just after 3 p.m., fast moving dark clouds brought heavy rain, large hail and then an incredible wind.
Four were killed at the rink and dozens were hurt. The wind toppled 31 homes around Hampton Beach.
When the storm raced offshore, a boat capsized, killing five more people.
News reports from that day called it a cyclone, known today as a tornado.
But John Jensenius, from the National Weather Service in Gray, Maine, doesn’t think that’s the case.
“It is interesting to me that with all the people that were there, that none of them reported seeing a funnel or wedge shaped clouds or anything of that nature,” he said.
Moore said the skating rink was flimsy. The roof blew off in minutes and the sides caved in.
“We are talking about construction standards. It's interesting [Moore] said it was a flimsy building. Those are the kind of things we'd be looking at today if we were trying to assess the damage of it,” he said.
Jensenius said the biggest problem investigating this storm today, is seeing which was the debris moved and the direction that everything collapsed.
There was a wide area of damage, from Great Boars Head to Haverhill Street, which is a mile south.
“We would not expect a tornado here in New Hampshire to create a mile-wide destruction. That would be more suggestive of a microburst,” he said.
“Winds can be just as strong with a microburst as with a tornado, and certainly in this case, an awful lot of damage there,” he said. “But at least in terms of the eyewitness accounts, it does sound a little more like a microburst than a tornado."