What are some of worst weather you have been in?

[tornado34jh]

I have been in quite a bit, from Hurricane Irma, to having a blizzard in Maine. But one storm I remember well was the derecho on June 29th, 2012. On that day, I was living in Northern Virginia and it was hot, 100 F with heat indexes up to 120 F, thus Excessive Heat Warnings were all over the place. It was like a sauna. Early on that day, thunderstorms were forming in Iowa, as time went on, the extreme heat produced a powerful line of storms known as a derecho. About an hour or so before it hit Fairfax County, it was warm and very humid. My sister was working at a Wendy's at the time. Lightning was flashing almost every second, and the wind gradually picked up. By around 10:30 pm that night, it hit full force with high-end storm force winds (65-70 mph). My sister was driving home from the rain and wind. The power went out, but unfortunately, that did not cool things down, as we had the same temperatures the next 3 days with no power. So to say it was warm and difficult to sleep was an understatement. Lots of trees were down and we had to go out in air-conditioned restaurants every now and then because it was hot in the house. Of course, we lived in an area that was near a creek, so if it was flooding, one of the roads would close, not to mention our neighborhood was on top of a hill, so you couldn't see the cars coming from the ascending side. It still remains as one of the top storms I have ever been in.

[Skittles]

1. that fucking polor vortex sucked

especially if you were in TEXAS and the fucking grid failed

[tornado34jh]

4. I'll bet

Especially since you are dealing with temperatures more typical of a humid continental climate or cold desert. Not that this is any excuse for it, but I do know if the power does go out, you would rather it be cold because you can put extra layers on. That said, Texas can and does get winter weather. They may not necessarily have a blizzard, but freezing rain/ice storm is no joke. Heating takes more energy than air conditioning, so you have to consider that when it comes to winter weather.

[Skittles]

5. I found that I need to account for my soft touch when stocking up....

my battery-candles when to one neighbor with kids, weighted blankets to another neighbor with kids, and my extra water to people in a building whose water was lost due to frozen pipes

[tornado34jh]

10. Were you in Texas when this cold snap occurred?

If so, yikes.

[Skittles]

19. yes

lots of different experiences.....some people who were near hospitals never lost electricity.....mine was on for one hour, off for ten, for three days - you'd be amazed how much you can get done in that one hour!!!

[tornado34jh]

24. Yeesh!

And you wonder why Texas can't seem to handle itself with certain types of weather. I'm not an electrician, but I would think that electrical infrastructure has some sort of redundancy so that if an area goes out, the entire thing doesn't go out like a string of Christmas lights.

[Skittles]

25. oh, they are fucking ridiculous

they drive like fucking idiots, too

[tornado34jh]

30. Same here in Florida

Some of the drivers here are bad. But again, I have never been to Texas, and I could only imagine what it is like over there when bad weather hits.

[Skittles]

36. my view is a bit jaded because I am a native of Illinois

I don't think it's like rocket science to know that when there are icy conditions on the road SLOW THE FUCK DOWN

[tornado34jh]

37. Not just ice

They don't slow down for snow, fog, ice, rain, low visibility and others, and you hear about these giant pile-ups because of it.

[Skittles]

38. CORRECT

[tornado34jh]

39. Correct me if I am wrong

But isn't it with rain/snow it takes several times longer to brake at the same speed than in dry asphalt?

[rsdsharp]

2. The most memorable was a F5 tornado in May 1968.

It killed 13, injured hundreds and utterly destroyed a large part of the small town I lived in. I was in a derecho in August 2020. Tons of damage, and power out at our house for 12 hours; for up to three days in other places.

I’ve been in more blizzards than I can count, a flood that knocked out the water treatment plant for 10 days, and I spent a memorable 16 hours in Needles, California in 116° heat without air conditioning or food when a train in front of ours derailed.

[tornado34jh]

6. Yikes, you sire have seen a lot

I have seen a funnel cloud in Illinois before I moved to Washington DC. I have only been in a blizzard once in Maine. But when I was in Montana, me and my dad were on our way back and when we went over the mountains, we had gale to near storm force winds, we couldn't see the center line on the road with all the blowing storm.

[bamagal62]

3. Hurricane Camille

The Blizzard of ‘93 in Atlanta
Snow Jam 2014 in Atlanta

[Skittles]

7. when I went to USAF tech school in Biloxi

I could still se some damage from Camille, and that was years later.

[tornado34jh]

11. Interesting

In all the storms we were in, we wouldn't see any damage after that. Although one time when I was living in Orlando, a brushfire erupted near where my aunt lived, some of the trees burned from it are still visible years later.

[tornado34jh]

8. I have been in a few snowstorms in Virginia

Only have been in a blizzard once, but of course, the snowstorms in Virginia were not good because we were on a hill and thus it was hard to get in and out. I once had to miss work because everything was snowed in.

[bamagal62]

31. I was 7 years old when Camille hit.

I was visiting my grandparents in Mobile.
Scariest thing I’ve ever been through in my life. We boarded up the windows and rode it out because my grandfather was in the hospital. We had one small 4x4 inch square that we could look outside into the blackness. I can still hear the sound of that wind to this day. I also remember listening to the radio and there were tornados EVERYWHERE.
I also rode out a typhoon in Hong Kong. But, that was like a small rainstorm compared to Camille.

[lordsummerisle]

9. Hurricane Hugo 1989 n/t

[tornado34jh]

12. That was just before I was born

I wasn't in my first hurricane until Hurricane Bertha in 1996

[Croney]

13. Many hurricanes, and THEN...

[tornado34jh]

15. I just read it on Wikipedia

Having lived in Northern Virginia for 9 years, I can say that winter weather in the Mid-Atlantic and New England areas is very unpredictable, especially with nor'easters. I've been in a few of them.

[wnylib]

43. That same year, in the Midwest in January,

there was another Blizzard of '78.

I was in Cleveland then and it was the worst blizzard I've ever experienced. Indiana, Ohio, and Michigan were the hardest hit. At Cleveland it was a bomb cyclone like the one that recently struck Buffalo. I call it a land hurricane with snow.

Warm rain, then rapid temperature drop that encased everything in ice, followed by steady winds of 60 to 80 mph, depending on location, and snow that came down sideways, parallel to the ground. Gusts clocked at 110 and 120 mph.

A local Cleveland weather reporter was broadcasting from inside a downtown bus shelter warning people to avoid the area due to flying debris and high rise office building windows shattering. Immediately after she said that, the wind lifted the entire bus shelter into the air and blew it away. The scene jumped all over the place as the camera man tried to grab her and find shelter for them. Then it went blank. (They were ok.)

[debm55]

14. I was stuck home in a blizzard with a 2 year old and my husband was down in Florida for business. I

believe it was 1995 , We were not to get heavy snow in Pittsburgh. But the wind shifted and stalled over the area, dropping 25 inches of snow. As I was coming home from school and going to pick up my son from daycare, they still said it would pass. On the way home from daycare. they were saying more snow would arrive-5 inches and then head up into NY. So stupid me did not stop at the store. We were snowed in for a week. We had food at home, but you always seem to need bread, milk and TP. even though we didn't. I was scared. School was called off for the week, bobcats came down the street on Thursday. Husband came home on Saturday. The following week we missed a week of school because of the Freeze Blast. So we returned to school two weeks after an almost two week Christmas break. My son loved it. Me, not so much, as we had downed trees in our yard.That snow came from the South and when that happens we get our blizzards. I still have pictures I took of it. Hubby watched on national news at disney.

[tornado34jh]

16. Yikes

Was it lake-effect snow or was it just a strong frontal storm system? Yeah, a lot of nor'easters/snow events in the Mid-Atlantic/Northeast regions tend to start either from Florida or near the Virginia/North Carolina border.

[debm55]

17. No, it came from the south. I live south of Pittsburgh. With moisture from the south and cold from N

Last edited Fri Feb 10, 2023, 10:53 PM - Edit history (1)

W it causes heavy snow. It wouldn't have been that bad if it kept moving. It stalled over Pittsburgh. Thousands were stuck at work because it started around rush hour. Until it happened we all figured and were told it would move. Had to get new gutters ( got gutter helmet} and lost some Japanese Oaks. Never forget standing on the porch, taking pictures of the wind and snow blowing sideway. We had a pine bend sideways. Come spring we got rid of it as it bearly made it through the storm. I was shocked the oak didn't.

[tornado34jh]

20. Oh boy

I lived in Illinois once, and we had our fair share of rough weather. The first year I was there, we had a hailstorm at night, it was like golf balls hitting the roof. Strangely, we didn't have to replace the roof, although some of the other neighbors did have to. Another time a lightning strike hit the chimney of a neighbor's house. We once had horrendous floods and many of the roads were closed, so much so that only one road in and out of town was open, including the middle school I was in.

[mobeau69]

18. Easy. The Great Blizzard of 1978.* Wed 1/25 - Fri 1/27

Lived in East Central Indiana. Heavy snow and high winds started around 6 pm. By 9 cars parked outside were covered. By morning snow drifts were up to power lines.


*The Blizzard of 1978 occurred in the Northeastern U.S. Sun 2/15 - Tue 2/17

[tornado34jh]

21. Yeah, I read about it on Wikipedia

How long did the snow stay there? It must have been a while.

[mobeau69]

29. It was 3 days before you could walk to the stores. Idiots with 4 wheel trucks clogged up the roads

Which hampered the big snow plows and front end loaders. They could only plow so much and then they didn’t have anyplace to put it so they had to load it on big dump trucks and haul it to rivers and streams. By about day 4 or 5 the major roads were passable. 6 to 8 ft snow walls on both sides of the road were commonplace. Some piles of snow in parking lots remained until Spring.

It was truly unbelievable.

[tornado34jh]

32. Wow, that is incredible

Many snowplow drivers hate it when people leave their cars on the road. I saw some video where a snowplow driver was plowing snow, and was mocking the people who left their cars on the road. I could understand their frustration.

[mobeau69]

40. Made some edits on my original post you may find interesting.

It was a long time ago so I refreshed my memory a bit.

The description on the NWS website is better than Wikipedia: https://www.weather.gov/iln/19780126

[tornado34jh]

44. Great information

It can sometimes be hard to find information with historical stuff. A lot of times when I look up historical weather events, it can be very tricky. Many times finding great sources is difficult.

[wnylib]

46. See my #43. I was in a western Cleveland suburb then.

Normally, we could see Interstate 90 from our back windows, but visibility was so bad that all we could see were bobbing lights in a row going down to the highway. They were rescuers, roped together in a line to rescue people stranded in cars. They handed them along the roped line of rescuers to waiting snowmobiles to get them to a shelter.

Churches and schools opened up as shelters. People donated food and blankets.

My husband and I were safe at home all day. Since it hit us in the western suburbs around 4 am, we had been unable to get out anywhere and just stayed put. I remember being awakened by the wind and looking out the window to see a row of evergreen saplings flapping parallel to the ground. Then a cracking sound as the top of a maple tree broke and was carried away in the wind.

[LakeArenal]

22. We had 12.5 acres mostly wooded with oaks.

We were fishing about 14 miles away when we heard the tornado warning. We started home and sirens were going off everywhere.
As we headed home we realized we were in the tornado. We did everything you aren’t supposed to do. We drive into it. We drove around downed wires. We crossed flooded roads. We watched trees going down. When we got home our whole neighborhood of trees were decimated. 15 properties had to have lumber salvage come clear their properties. But…. Not one structure was damaged. No homes, barns or garages were leveled. But hundreds of acres of old oaks reduced to scrape.

Sad but miraculous.

[tornado34jh]

33. That's the weird thing with tornadoes

Sometimes a house could just be obliterated and the next house over would be mostly unaffected by it. I think it is the way that the rotation goes. The forward motion adds to the winds of a tornado, but on the other side, the winds are going against the rotation, so it is not as strong.

[Better Days Ahoy]

23. I've lived in NJ, L.A., NOLA, Detroit & now New England

So:
- Earthquake during Calculus class in L.A.
- Five hurricanes in NOLA. Oh, six hurricanes because I went back to finish an MBA during Hurricane Andrew.
- 30" snowfall at the Jersey shore (small "s" -- I hate that stupid TV show).
- Waaaay too much snow in Michigan for four years.
- Tornado in Springfield, MA.

And apparently, it ain't over, folks.

And thank you for the hearts, DU friends!

[tornado34jh]

27. So you have been through a lot as well

I was in an earthquake in 2011 in out of all places Virginia. It was a 5.8 magnitude earthquake west of Richmond. I was upstairs and I thought it was someone moving things, as we just came back from overseas. Turns out it wasn't. My friends were saying on Facebook it was an earthquake. I didn't believe it at first, then I went to the USGS website, and it turns out there in fact was one.

I never cared for Jersey Shore (the TV show) after I watched Real World, I thought it was unrealistic.


Same here, thanks for the hearts

[Better Days Ahoy]

47. Yes, been through a bunch of different weather events

But never had my life or property endangered as I suspect many here on DU have. So my experiences are just that without the heartache.

Respect and thoughts for those here who have been impacted by natural disasters.

[tornado34jh]

49. I haven't either

But it comes to show how much we often take the weather and really Earth for granted. We often think, "Oh this storm won't affect me or it isn't so bad", and then it hits and you realize how wrong you were. Now again, there are sometimes instances where you can't get out of the way, particularly with earthquakes and to some extent volcanoes.

[Better Days Ahoy]

50. Yes, and it's horrible and tragic when people underestimate

Nature's power. We're so small against natural disasters. So are things we build.

[tornado34jh]

52. Indeed

Even then, nothing is completely weather proof or earthquake proof. Taipei 101 in Taiwan has a tuned mass dampener for earthquakes and typhoons, but I don't think we can say it is completely earthquake proof.

[Better Days Ahoy]

58. Wow, a mass dampener for quakes & typhoons

Will have to look up that one, tornado.
Nice handle for this threads, too, BTW.

[tornado34jh]

59. Have a look at this one from a 6.8 earthquake

It's designed to absorb vibrations to prevent the building from collapsing. It's a giant 700 ton ball that swings around rather than the building itself.

Another one from Typhoon Soudelar

Japan also has it when the building is flexible and sways, but the core inside is still intact. The problem becomes when a building is too rigid. It may be good for things like hurricanes, but since earthquakes have both lateral and vertical motion, the former being a lot more problematic, it could damage or collapse the building if it doesn't have means to disperse the vibrations Of course, Japan and Taiwan have a longer history of this stuff. Of course, the higher up you go, the stronger the winds. What may be say a Category 2 hurricane at ground level, at 1,000 feet up, it could be Category 3 or 4. The Burj Khalifa in Dubai, UAE is 2,722 feet, so the winds are much stronger at the top than at ground level.

[kimbutgar]

26. Snowmobiling in Yosemite when it was 10 degrees and snowing hard

I was cold down to private parts of my body. And in Antigua during a hurricane and hearing the wind and fearing the roof was going to blow off the resort I was staying at. It was kind of experiencing nightmare sounds of winds.

[tornado34jh]

28. I bet it was cold

Strangely, when I put hurricane sounds on Youtube, it helps me sleep, but when I am in a hurricane, I am as alert as can be.

[kimbutgar]

34. I'll never forget the sound

I was also in a tornado when I was a kid and all I heard was a whirling banging sound. But the hurricane was more intense coupled with the fear the roof would blow off.

[tornado34jh]

35. A friend of mine had some shingles in her house ripped off by Hurricane Ian last year

Some water got in, and although the thing has since been repaired, it was strange. But amazingly, we didn't lose power.

[Chainfire]

41. Being a native born Floridian, in 70 years, I have been through a number of hurricanes

but Michael that blew through here a little over four years ago was impressive. It was not the national newsmaker that some storms have been because it came through a rural area. I live on wooded property and it took down 65% of all of my trees. It took me five days with a chainsaw to cut my way from the house to the street! Just to the West of me it flattened whole forests, not to mention all of the homes and businesses.

The force of the wind was just nothing short of amazing. The sounds of giant trees snapping like toothpicks will remain with me. When people tell you that the strong winds sound like a train rumbling down the tracks, they mean it literally.

[tornado34jh]

45. Yeah, especially when it shaking the building

People have described powerful winds such as tornadoes and hurricanes as sounding like a freight train, screeching, whistling, rumbling, and so forth. Wind is a powerful force, and especially in certain areas, it can be immense. In the Balkans, there is something called a bora wind. It races down the mountains at sometimes hurricane force winds. One place, Maslenica Bridge (sounds like Maslenitsa) in Croatia had winds recorded at 248 km/h. That is 154 mph, almost a borderline Category 5 hurricane equivalent.

[tornado34jh]

48. I see many of you have quite a lot of weather stories to tell

Years ago I used to watch "Storm Stories" on the Weather Channel, and it details the types of storms (floods, wind, blizzard, etc.) many of you have dealt with. We always want to try to control the weather like you see in sci-fi movies, but we can't.

[wnylib]

51. Living all my life in the Northeast, I have

seen many bad snowstorms and a few blizzards, one of which was horrendous (described in post #43).

But my scariest weather experiences came from three separate tornadoes at different times.

The first was when I still lived in my hometown, Erie, PA. I was at work around 11:00 am. Our offices were separated into cubicles and only the receptionist had an outdoor view from a front window. She walked through my area and commented that it was pitch black outside and raining hail. Tornadoes were not common there so we did not know that those were classic warning signs.

Our building was in a suburb near the airport and we were used to the sound of planes flying over. But the sound of one of them seemed not to die down as they usually did after passing by. The sound stayed steady. We all looked up from our desks and asked, "What's that?" Shortly afterward, at lunch, we heard on the radio that an EF1 had passed over us and touched down in a small village nearby. Minor damage.

Second, here in western NY. I worked in a small town about 30 miles from where lived. My car was getting repairs while I worked and would not be ready until the next day, so I called my husband's cousin for a ride home. He told me that there were tornado warnings in the area and one had touched down so it was not safe on the roads. It was clear and sunny where I was. The cousin's 18 year old son insisted that he could come for me.

As we were driving along the county highway toward home, the rain and cloud cover made visibility nearly zero. Then he said that he could hardly hold the car on the road because the wind was so strong. I could feel the wind battering us. We could not see the road or anything else. He just kept driving straight ahead. After a few minutes, visibility improved and the wind was not so strong. Next day as I went through that open stretch of highway on the way to work, I saw the path left by a tornado that had cut through open fields and then up the side of a wooded hill. The field grass was flattened. Trees had been completely removed on the hillside, creating a "road" where there had not been one before. That's the area that we had driven through during the storm. We must have driven right on the edge of the funnel.

Third was a huge supercell that went from northeastern Ohio through northwestern PA to western NY and southern Ontario. It spawned dozens of tornadoes, from EF1 to EF4 and one EF5. We were in western NY where I am now. I was watching an Erie TV station on cable when they broke in with emergency announcements and warnings about the tornado clusters. By then I had learned a lot about them after having lived in Ohio for 5 years. When I heard the locations around Erie that had been hit, I knew that we would be in the path and told my husband. We took shelter and listened to local radio. We heard hail, but nothing touched down where we were. When it was clear to go out, we called his 80 year old aunt who lived alone on a farm about 15 miles outside of town. When we got no answer, we started driving out there. We passed several points where trees and parts of buildings were down, one across the road that we were on. Local people were cutting up the huge tree in the road with chainsaws and told us to turn around. When we told them where we were going and why, they cleared a path to drive through.

We reached his aunt's farmhouse and saw no damage. She came out to the porch and said, "How nice of you kids to visit." Her power had gone off and she had not heard any of the warnings or news about places that were hit.

[tornado34jh]

53. Wow, impressive!

I lived in Illinois for a while, and yet I have only ever seen a funnel cloud, but we definitely had our fair share of severe weather. It was mostly rain, high winds, and heavy lightning, and only once did we have hail, and another time we had a funnel cloud, but other than nothing significant.

[malthaussen]

54. The blizzard of '78, in Philadelphia.

And the lesser-known Blizzard of '76.

-- Mal

[tornado34jh]

55. The Groundhog Day gale of 1976 I see

But it sounds like the 1977 blizzard was impressive. I think the most snow I have ever been in was in Virginia in 2014 when we got close to 2 feet of snow.

[malthaussen]

56. 76-78 was very snowy in the Philly area.

The very first day of 1976, I was talking on the phone all night to a friend (I was answering phones for a crisis intervention hotline, and she worked for another). Walked out the door in the morning, and couldn't find my car.

Later in the year, during the transition from 76-77, I was privileged to drive a cab during all the snowstorms. Had to abandon one, it got stuck and couldn't move.

The '78 blizzard was so bad, my light compact car couldn't plough through the snow, so I had to be towed by a big, heavy Cadillac to get home from work.

-- Mal

[JustABozoOnThisBus]

57. Hurricane Elena was sitting off Florida's west coast

I was driving a van on I-75. It was windy and rainy, bigly. I tailgated a semi so my tires could find pavement in the paths that the semi squeegeed for me. When we hit GA, I backed away from the truck, the weather turned into an ordinary rainstorm. Made it.

2017, leaving Yellowstone Park, it started snowing like crazy in the mountains. I looked up one slope and saw a cannon that is probably used to cause controlled avalanches. A Bit worrying. We finally made it to a low enough altitude that it was all sind and rain, no snow, but I wouldn't stop driving until we got almost to Iowa. Freaky snow. It even had a name: Snowstorm Valerie. Who knew snowstorms had names?

[tornado34jh]

60. The naming of winter storms is a relatively new thing

It mostly started on the Weather Channel. Personally, I am not really a huge fan of that. I can understand it with hurricanes, but not the other. In Europe they do it with windstorms (i.e. strong frontal storm systems), although if it came from a hurricane in the Atlantic, they will often keep the name of the hurricane and just called it ex-hurricane x (e.g. Ex-Hurricane Danielle for example). But I think the intent was so that they can keep track of it, but sometimes for me it can be confusing at times. But these strong extratropical cyclones can certainly pack a punch, especially in the UK and Ireland. In the Mediterranean there is something called a medicane (Mediterranean tropical-like cyclone, sometimes called a Mediterranean hurricane). They do sometimes have an eye-like structure. However, it is mostly rain and flash floods that are the big threat.

Pretty impressive weather you had there

[JustABozoOnThisBus]

61. As a nod to your name, in 2017, on the way TO Yellowstone,

we saw a tornado, either ND or WY, a skinny funnel from the clouds to the ground, which was way below us in a valley to our left. We couldn't see what it was doing way down on the ground, but we were so remote, it might have annoyed a goat, probably no real damage.

We were grateful to leave the area at the front end of the snowstorm, especially after seing the gates that could be lowered across the interstate to force traffic off the main road and into dog-knows-where.

Yellowstone in mid-May was great. Snow covered the ground, huge piles plowed to the sides of the road, bison taking the easy walk along paved and cleared roads. And with the temps in the twenties, every minor steam vent was clearly visible along the road, not just the big named geysers. Plus (pre-pandemic) the kids were still in school, so the place was not crowded.

[tornado34jh]

64. Very interesting

I have never been to Yellowstone, maybe would like to go there someday. Probably what is known as a rope tornado is what you may have been seeing. It tends to occur towards the end of the tornado stage, although you can get small tornadoes only tens of feet wide. I never heard of gates blocking the interstate, where is that?

[JustABozoOnThisBus]

74. Wyoming had gates on I-90, some on ramps, some on the highway

[tornado34jh]

76. I would have never guessed that

I did not think that existed. I understand seeing that in bridges and others, but not on highways.

[ProfessorGAC]

62. Early 1978

Spent about 10 weeks in Saskatoon on a start-up project of a new continuous reactor design.
COLD!!! Sun came up at 8, set at 4.
The high temperature of the warmest day we were there was 15°F. Had "nights" where it was 40 below. (Nights in quotes because I'm talking about 5 or 5:30pm.)
The whole time, I wondered why anybody lived there.

[tornado34jh]

63. It's a pretty high latitude there

It's in the same latitude as the Netherlands, northern Germany, and Poland. But of course, you're in the middle of the continent with no large bodies of water, so it is much colder. But yeah, there are some places in the Sakha Republic of Russia where temperatures can get to -70 F, but yet there are people that live there. I sometimes ask myself, how do people live in such extreme conditions? At those temperatures, bromine is a solid, and chlorine is actually a liquid, not a gas.

[VGNonly]

65. The Blizzard of 78 yikes!

The January cold snap 82, not a single event. It was frightfully cold for about 3 weeks. I don't think it got above 5. The wind chills were constant, in -30 range or worse everyday. Pipes froze, windows would crack. We really didn't have a lot of snow, so we lost insulative value of heavy snow.

Cedar Point tornado 1977. I was working at CP, the amusement park. A tornado struck the peninsula. Gale force winds, constant lighting strikes, thunder that was like artillery bursts. We had about 4' of rain in a half-hour. The tip of the point got it the worse. The Mine Ride coaster was shut down for 3 weeks, huge trees fell on it, bending the large tubular rails.

[sakabatou]

66. Lightning storm up in Ohio.

[tornado34jh]

67. When was this?

I've been in thunderstorms with lightning counts of at least 40-50 strikes per minute. Some storms I have heard have gone over 2 strikes per second (120 strikes per minute).

[Elessar Zappa]

68. Nothing too bad.

In the past 20 years we’ve had a few lows of 10 degrees and a few highs over 100 but that’s it. No crazy snow, no real floods, etc. I live in the mountains of southern New Mexico.

[tornado34jh]

69. Interesting

Have you dealt with wildfires/brushfires? I know I have seen them here in Florida, but it usually involves droughts and particularly when La Niña is around.

[Elessar Zappa]

70. Yes,

there have been wild fires about twenty miles north of us.

[tornado34jh]

71. We had a really bad drought in Florida in 2017

My parents and I were on our way to the Everglades. While going down on I-75, there were brushfires on the side of the highway. Ironically there were thunderstorms near Big Cypress National Preserve, but yet you could see the smoke from the fires from Lake Okeechobee. By the time the rainy season started, we were under an extreme drought (D3), but it helped that it was a well above normal rainy season.

[Elessar Zappa]

72. Wow,

I didn’t know Florida ever had droughts. I thought it was always wet and rainy. Interesting.

[tornado34jh]

73. Most people don't think Florida does get wildfires, they do

Humidity doesn't really increase until late May into June. From March-May, temperatures are increasing, but the humidity still remains low. In fact, there was one point in 2017 where Florida believe it or not had the worst drought at the time, even worse than California.

[Emile]

75. Spent a month out at sea north of the Arctic circle, rode out

at sea through two different hurricanes.

[tornado34jh]

77. What were you doing there?

Which hurricanes were they?

[Emile]

78. US Navy

Homeported Mayport, Florida aboard the USS Albany CG10. This was back 1969 - 1973. Not sure the names of the hurricanes. Whenever there is a hurricane navy ships go to sea because they get damaged tied to a dock.

In September 1972 we were doing naval exercises with the sixth fleet in the Arctic ocean. Rough seas up there.

[pfitz59]

79. my house was torn apart in a windstorm when I was 6

I was rescued by a fireman. Remember it clearly.

[tornado34jh]

80. Yikes, where was this?

Sounds like it was intense!

[Duppers]

81. Hurricane Isabel, Sept. '03.

It took down two huge 70' trees, one within 16' of our house. We were watching that closest tree sway back and forth, trying to decide when to run. Thankfully, it crashed parallel to our house but it really rocked the house when It landed on the ground with a huge thug, then another bounce.

We made pics of the huge roots raising almost 6' above the ground. They were such tall trees.

Foundation experts were sent by our insurance company after the neighborhood clean up to check to see if our foundation was okay. It was.

We were without electricity for 10 days! But had running water, thankfully.