What is the most extreme weather you've ever experience directly?

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There was once a mini-tornado in my hometown, tho most of us slept right through it. In Blighty the worst we ever seem to get is the occasional marble sized hailstones, flash floods and the odd blizzard - extremely rare in life-threatening severity. I suspect the Americans will therefore own this thread but tell me if you've ever been caught up in a tornado, intense snowstorm, plague of frogs or somesuch...

― stevem (blueski), Tuesday, 22 July 2003 18:01 (twenty-two years ago)

There was once a tornado on Long Island, which was weird. It almost knocked a massive tree into our house. Also several hurricanes, one knocked the power in our neighborhood for a week.

― Ally (mlescaut), Tuesday, 22 July 2003 18:03 (twenty-two years ago)

yeah! there was a mini-tornado here too. Uprooted a few trees, and stuff. And there was there the Great Storm of '87!

― jel -- (jel), Tuesday, 22 July 2003 18:04 (twenty-two years ago)

i can't figure out if i'd love to see a tornado for real or not.

huge bonus points to anyone here who's ever seen a lighting-based fireball or St Elmo's Fire (no not the film)

― stevem (blueski), Tuesday, 22 July 2003 18:05 (twenty-two years ago)

i slept thru most of the so called 'great storm of '87' - it did bring down the tallest tree in my home town tho

― stevem (blueski), Tuesday, 22 July 2003 18:05 (twenty-two years ago)

I live in Canada, kids. The Prairies. The weather's the only extreme thing for miles and miles (kms & kms, actually).

― Horace Mann (Horace Mann), Tuesday, 22 July 2003 18:06 (twenty-two years ago)

i woke up during the storm of 87 and wondered why all the street lights were out, and stood at my window for a while w/o realising what wz going on

next day i had got almost into work b4 i started wondering why all the trees in eg fitzroy square were blown over

― mark s (mark s), Tuesday, 22 July 2003 18:06 (twenty-two years ago)

Is an earthquake weather? Probably not. Damn it. I was in an earthquake, but it must not have been too strong, because it was fun, not scary.

― NA (Nick A.), Tuesday, 22 July 2003 18:07 (twenty-two years ago)

Lots of near tornados, touchdowns close by in my life. But never a dorothy experience.

After a tornado barralled through downtown ft worth 3 yrs ago, I went there to visit my mom. It was great, looked like godzilla had stomped right through downtown.

― Texas Sam (thatgirl), Tuesday, 22 July 2003 18:08 (twenty-two years ago)

We got sent home from school after the great storm, so it was pretty cool!

Renee from Allo Allo was injured during the storm wasn't he??

― jel -- (jel), Tuesday, 22 July 2003 18:08 (twenty-two years ago)

I've had earthquakes (not here in SK though), floods, blizzards, droughts, tornadoes, whatever.
I guess no hurricanes or tidal waves though. But I'm working on it.

― Horace Mann (Horace Mann), Tuesday, 22 July 2003 18:09 (twenty-two years ago)

i was gonna say earthquakes count so do tell about those. i imagine a heavy earthquake to be the most terrifying thing ever, if you're not used to them (and even if you are perhaps). The Dudley tremor was bad enough!

― stevem (blueski), Tuesday, 22 July 2003 18:11 (twenty-two years ago)

Experienced -60 degree wind chill, blizzard, tornado, and flash floods at this house. Tornados are the scariest, but the floods were the only thing that caused direct damage to the house. Not having power and simultaneosly dealing with standing water in your family room ain't much fun.

Also, helped my sister move from one apartment to another in Phoenix when it was about 115 degrees outside. Couldn't touch the loading/step thing on the back of the truck and had to wrap all metal and glass things in towels in order to carry them. But, it was a dry heat ;-)

― oops (Oops), Tuesday, 22 July 2003 18:15 (twenty-two years ago)

I was on a Cathay Pacific plane which tried to land (in the days when they used to come in over the houses) at Hong Kong during a typhoon. Not fun.

― C J (C J), Tuesday, 22 July 2003 18:17 (twenty-two years ago)

Ice Storm '98. Looked beautiful, was fun to run around in, and Montreal completely in darkness was pretty cool, but folks having no electricity and hot water for weeks--pas tres cool.

― cybele (cybele), Tuesday, 22 July 2003 18:19 (twenty-two years ago)

Watched a tornado lift a swingset out of a neighbor's yard when I was 10. Then I ran inside screaming.

My house got struck by lightning that same year; the "on/off" light on the stove has been reversed ever since (oven is on, light is OFF, etc).

Left a beach house in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina once about 12 hours before a hurricane ripped the whole thing out of the ground.

Driving on the interstate when it suddenly started pouring down golf-ball size hail was interesting. So was the racket it made as they pelted my car. My hood & roof were dented all to fuck.

etc.

― nickalicious (nickalicious), Tuesday, 22 July 2003 18:20 (twenty-two years ago)

tornado.
1987.
edmonton.
shopping mall, lots of glass. convinces the roof will shatter.

― anthony easton (anthony), Tuesday, 22 July 2003 18:21 (twenty-two years ago)

oooh yeah, ice storm. I remember one, must've been '96. I was coming down from acid, and it was so gorgeous, esp the trees.

― oops (Oops), Tuesday, 22 July 2003 18:21 (twenty-two years ago)

Lots of tornados and snowstorms; when was a kid one tornado knocked out our power for over two weeks in the middle of summer, it was terrible.

― Larcole (Nicole), Tuesday, 22 July 2003 18:22 (twenty-two years ago)

CJ - that's scary. I flew into that airport once, about a month before they shifted to the new airport, and it was pretty damn scary without any kind of storm at all. You could wave to the people in the highrises as you passed.

― NA (Nick A.), Tuesday, 22 July 2003 18:23 (twenty-two years ago)

Ok, about tornados: they are very very localized phenomena, so unless you have one very close by or on top of you, having one happen "in your area" is no big deal. I have had many, many tornados occur nearby when I lived in Tennessee.

One time in Memphis there was a storm and the wind was blow VERY VERY hard, and I thought I had a tornado comming my way - i hid in the bathroom and everything. Nothing happened, and the next day the weatherman said there was a freak windstorm that produced unusually strong winds.

In Tampa we get waterspouts now and then. Never saw one though.

Went through a hurricane, no power for three day.

― fletrejet, Tuesday, 22 July 2003 18:26 (twenty-two years ago)

I went out and stood in a hurricane out in NB back in 99 or so. Well technically it was downgraded to tropical storm the night before but it was still damm impressive. It made it a bitch to try and smoke. I mean the area was almost always hit by high winds (thank you very much Bay of Fundy) but the clouds were doing all sorts of angry things.
Being in NB I won't even start on snow stories, though I am thanking my lucky stars that the 98 ice storm spared Moncton and south east NB.

Quick Fact For The Day: Charlottetown has the heaviest snow fall for capitals in Canada.

― Mr Noodles (Mr Noodles), Tuesday, 22 July 2003 18:27 (twenty-two years ago)

Driving down a main thorughfare in Wichita KS in 1992 watching a tornado take shape, twisting and elongating toward the ground, just 80 yards or so in front of us. My friend and I were nearing his house and played chicken with the tornado by continuing forward to his street (about 30-40 yards up), we turned in, parked the car, ran into his basement. Debris everywhere a couple of hours later, huge branches and entire trees blocking the neighborhood streets.

Lived in Houston as a kid and loved hurricane weather. You could take an umbrella outside and let the wind pick you up and deposit you 10 feet over. All the kids would be out having fun while the 'rents went to buy large amounts of bottled water!

Dallas' main weather motif is HAIL which is no fun.

― Aaron A., Tuesday, 22 July 2003 18:29 (twenty-two years ago)

This is sooo lame compared to everyone elses, but I've just returned from visiting my girlfriend in Germany (her studies end in two weeks, hurrah! And with the added bonus of no more house sharing with morons for me) where they have been experiencing the hottest weather for decades. And with neither of us big fans of sun or heat - due to our ginger haired fair skin - sweating, sitting in the shade drinking cold beers as the temperature hits 36ºC on her birthday is as extreme as I ever want it, thanks all the same.

Returning to the UK where it was mid-20's was like entering an air confitioned country.

― Chewshabadoo (Chewshabadoo), Tuesday, 22 July 2003 18:31 (twenty-two years ago)

Not sure -- a couple of blizzards, some heat waves, some heavy rains and all. But nothing so astoundingly memorable that I can easily call everything about it to mind.

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Tuesday, 22 July 2003 18:32 (twenty-two years ago)

You could wave to the people in the highrises as you passed

Yes, you could! You could see into people's living rooms.

I lived in Honkers for a couple of years, so I got used to the scary approach after a while - they never had any airline disasters there though, heaven knows why not.

Living over there, I experienced quite a lot of typhoons. They have a system of flags which are used to signal the proximity and severity of the typhoon - when the Number 3 flag goes up, it means the eye of the storm is quite a long way off. It might be very windy/raining, but everyone carries on working as normal. The next signal is the Number 8 - and when that goes up, you have about an hour to get home from work before all the stores close and public transport stops running. A Number 10 signal means it's going to be a direct hit, and a bad one at that. I experienced two of those.

When the Number 8 went up, my friends and I had a system whereby each of us had a specific task to do - one would get videos before the rental place closed, one would buy food, one would get beer, and we would all meet up back at my flat for a Typhoon Party. I used to have to bring in all the plant pots from the balcony (I lived on the 34th floor overlooking the harbour, and flying debris is a Bad Idea) and would have to stick packing tape all over the windows in case the glass shattered.

And then we would party.

― C J (C J), Tuesday, 22 July 2003 18:33 (twenty-two years ago)

Probably the most extreme was being in India over the summer one year. Went from air conditioning to swimming pool to air conditioning as much as possible.

Never really lived in Hong Kong, my family lived there while I was in college, the longest I spent there at a time was a summer (3 months). But I remember that scary-ass airport.

― NA (Nick A.), Tuesday, 22 July 2003 18:36 (twenty-two years ago)

nickalicious-

You forgot the Ice Crisis '03... It may not sound impressive, but thick ice + old trees == destruction. It was much like the hand of God throwing big trees all over the city. Roads blocked, blackouts in the majority of the downtown neighborhoods, shelters full frozen college students, cats and dogs living together.

― Dale the Merciless (cprek), Tuesday, 22 July 2003 18:37 (twenty-two years ago)

This might not qualify as "weather," but NYC during the morning of 9/11 was pretty extreme: smoke, ash, bits of paper, the sky so white you couldn't even see two feet in front of you, impossible to breathe the air, people hunched over with their hands covering their faces.

― Jody Beth Rosen (Jody Beth Rosen), Tuesday, 22 July 2003 18:45 (twenty-two years ago)

"cats and dogs living together"!!! Yessir.

Walking under 100' tall trees down on Mentel Park while the wind was blowing and hearing the creaking of branches covered in like 5 centimeters of ice overhead = nickalicious running very fast. Well, until he fell down (cuz the ground was covered in ice too OH NO!).

― nickalicious (nickalicious), Tuesday, 22 July 2003 18:49 (twenty-two years ago)

Noodles: Charlottetown gets more snow than St. John's? That's impressive!
When I was small and living in SW Saskatchewan we had a tornado go through our yard. It ripped a few pine trees out of the ground and destroyed our fence. Incredible noise!

― Bryan (Bryan), Tuesday, 22 July 2003 18:53 (twenty-two years ago)

I live in the midwest now = tons of small-to-medium weather to deal with, lots of tornados nearby, we had one that killed someone a few years back but it was a mile away from where I was. Big hailstorms, but nothing that destroyed anything of mine. Growing up in Arizona seems more extreme now that I look back on it...120 degree summer days, swarms of grasshoppers and frogs, droughts and then flash flooding.

― teeny (teeny), Tuesday, 22 July 2003 18:54 (twenty-two years ago)

Quebec's 98 Ice Storm was a nasty nasty thing.

― Mr Noodles (Mr Noodles), Tuesday, 22 July 2003 18:55 (twenty-two years ago)

Cripes!

― Dale the Merciless (cprek), Tuesday, 22 July 2003 19:02 (twenty-two years ago)

bigger picture:
http://www.canoe.ca/CNEWSIceStorm/jan10_nphoto2.html

wow!

― teeny (teeny), Tuesday, 22 July 2003 19:05 (twenty-two years ago)

1998 sometime - drove through a tornado in Sandusky, Ohio. Lifted the car off the ground and moved us to the opposite side of the parking lot. I SCREAMED MY BLOODY HEAD OFF.

Winter 2003 - 5 fucking feet of snow in front of my door. I couldn't leave my house or go to work for 4 days. My roommate and I were bored to tears.

― Mandee, Tuesday, 22 July 2003 19:06 (twenty-two years ago)

Charlottetown gets 338.7 cm of snow (about 11 feet of snow?), Quebec City rings in with 337.0 cm and St John's gets a measely 322.1 cm of snow but gets more rain. Halifax deserves special mention for its ability to have fog, rain and snow within the same hour though

― Mr Noodles (Mr Noodles), Tuesday, 22 July 2003 19:14 (twenty-two years ago)

A number of hurricanes and tropical storms (the latter, in the New Orleans area, tend to be worse; the difference is just one of windspeed, and rainfall is at least as much a factor down there), I'm not even sure how many. Eight? Three or four were serious. The flooding during TS Frances was bad enough and rapid enough that you had to grab on to mailboxes, posts, and whatnot to make your way through the French Quarter (where I was stranded cause the busses were stalled, cars abandoned, and city shut down).

I was in Kansas City KS during the midwest flooding of 1993; towards the end of it, you could look outside and all the roads were empty because the only ones that weren't covered in water led to the ones that were.

Many blizzards, but especially the winters of 1979 or so to 1981, maybe 1982, which were heavy enough that the snow drifts were a story and a half high -- I dug a tunnel from the second-floor bathroom to the driveway in 1980.

― Tep (ktepi), Tuesday, 22 July 2003 19:21 (twenty-two years ago)

Yeah, I got caught in that same ice storm in the late 90s while living in Eastern Ontario. It sure was purty. Like how I picture heaven, but much colder.

― Bruce Urquhart (Bruce Urquhart), Tuesday, 22 July 2003 19:24 (twenty-two years ago)

I lived through the great Quebec ice storm of '98.

(good for me)

― s1utsky (slutsky), Tuesday, 22 July 2003 19:28 (twenty-two years ago)

Hurricane Andrew raging outside my house in 96. Thank mucho for strong electrical tape on the windows....

― Nichole Graham (Nichole Graham), Tuesday, 22 July 2003 19:42 (twenty-two years ago)

In 1999 I spent a week's vacation on the North Carolina Outer Banks. That same week Hurricane Dennis kept cycling north and south, just offshore.

― j.lu (j.lu), Tuesday, 22 July 2003 19:46 (twenty-two years ago)

My worst weather experience was on a Boeing trying to land at Dallas-Ft. Worth just after a storm system had passed through. There were still downdrafts and the plane occasionally plunged some number of feet (hard to tell how much, but a few seconds of negative gravity at a time). The pilot made three passes at the runway then gave up and went to Oklahoma City, where I spent the night in the airport. I was worried that, being Texas, the pilot might be some kind of cowboy ("Yeehaw, let's ride this bronc in!"), but I guess he wasn't.

I've been in a few earthquakes; they're not nearly so fun when you're a property owner with no EQ insurance. My chimney cracked in the worst one, and I had to have the top few feet taken down.

― nickn (nickn), Tuesday, 22 July 2003 22:18 (twenty-two years ago)

We drove through a freakin' hurricane in New Mexico yesterday.

― hstencil, Wednesday, 23 July 2003 05:16 (twenty-two years ago)

I highly doubt that.

― oops (Oops), Wednesday, 23 July 2003 05:17 (twenty-two years ago)

I have been through many many hurricanes. They are bad. As in, the opposite of good.

― Kenan Hebert (kenan), Wednesday, 23 July 2003 05:19 (twenty-two years ago)

super-strong winds, lots of dust blowing everywhere, the van almost going off the road, lots of rain = seems close enough to a hurricane to me.

― hstencil, Wednesday, 23 July 2003 05:36 (twenty-two years ago)

Bushfires. Lots of 'em. Grew up in Canberra which is surrounded by lots of nice flammable gum trees. Several sets of being sent home from school to make sure homes were ok, that kind of thing... entire town surrounded by fire one year (a town just out of canberra that is) which was scary but we were safe.

Last year a large section of Canberra's subrubs was razed flat by a ferocious bushfire that caught the fireys and CFA offguard completely. Several suburbs and the wonderful Mt Stromolo observatory demolished. I wasn't there, but my parents were and they said it was freaky - black sky in the daytime, blood-red sun. Ash all over *everything*. A friend of mine had to spend a large part of several days sitting on his roof with a hose putting out stray embers and so on.

Other than that, there was this mini-tornado sort of thing once that tore out the huge gum tree in our backyard in one fell swoop. I saw it fall over, ran into the loungeroom to tell everyone and no one believed me til they saw it. I've been terrified of strong wind ever since.

― Trayce (trayce), Wednesday, 23 July 2003 05:47 (twenty-two years ago)

I remember it snowing in L.A. once in the 80s. That was pretty extreme, relatively of course.

― Spencer Chow (spencermfi), Wednesday, 23 July 2003 05:49 (twenty-two years ago)

Another vote for the Great Storm of 1987 (which was a proper hurricane - something like 50 million trees were blown down), which I decidedly didn't sleep through.

I also experienced Mandee's snowed-in-ness, but about a mile down the road. I was so excited!

― Mark C (Mark C), Wednesday, 23 July 2003 11:42 (twenty-two years ago)

one year passes...

Tropical Storms Beryl (1994), Barry (2001), and Hurricane Earl (1998) have made the greatest impressions on me, and Earl was only a Category 1!

Tropical Storm Arlene should be up this way by Saturday. I wanted to post it in my 2005 Hurricane Season thread and I've been searching for it but I can't find it at all. Did someone delete it?

― Ian Riese-Moraine. Exposing ambitious careerists as charlatans since 1986. (East, Thursday, 9 June 2005 17:00 (twenty-one years ago)

Hurricanes. I don't remember their names. There were several of them. I remember getting under a table as a kid with my grandma as the eye passed right over us. It didn't seem like that big a deal at the time, but I guess it kinda was.

― slightly more subdued (kenan), Thursday, 9 June 2005 17:03 (twenty-one years ago)

I've been in the same county as a lot of tornadoes, but the most extreme weather I've personally witnessed was when the state of Missouri was basically underwater during the Summer of '93. You couldn't get anywhere because the roads were washed out, the water company kept issuing boil warnings, and it just fucking kept raining and raining and raining.

― Pleasant Plains /// (Pleasant Plains ///), Thursday, 9 June 2005 17:08 (twenty-one years ago)

The Ice Storm of 1994 locked down everything from Texas to DC, if I recall. Our power was out for a week, and we were lucky, being in town. There were folks out in the country whose power was out for 30-40 days.

― Rock Hardy (Rock Hardy), Thursday, 9 June 2005 17:11 (twenty-one years ago)

Oh fuck, I forgot that it actually snowed down here (yes, in Florida) during the Storm of the Century! We moved that day, though, so I didn't get to enjoy it. It used to snow every four years but La Nina/El Nino in 1997 fucked up the pattern and it hasn't snowed since.

― Ian Riese-Moraine. Exposing ambitious careerists as charlatans since 1986. (East, Thursday, 9 June 2005 21:23 (twenty-one years ago)

new york city never got any EXTREEEEME weather -- a cop-out of a hurricane in the '80s (gloria) and a few snowstorms that are nothing compared to what they get in, say, minnesota or vermont.

i've been in new orleans and florida during raging summer storms; that was extreme. and in tucson i've been outside in 110-degree heat (the high for that day was 115). i'm told it gets even hotter later in the summer.

― metal assembly (Jody Beth Rosen), Thursday, 9 June 2005 22:46 (twenty-one years ago)

but no, nyc don't get shit. long island and the jersey shore definitely do, though.

― metal assembly (Jody Beth Rosen), Thursday, 9 June 2005 22:47 (twenty-one years ago)

Last year we had a lot of rain over a very short period of time and it caused widespread mini-flooding across the city. Driving down one of the highways there were vans with water up to the top of the windows parked on the side of the road. I tried to get off the highway because I couldn't see where I was driving due to the heavy rain. I tried to cut across on a side road but every way I tried to go was blocked by deep water on all sides. It's the scariest thing I've ever experienced. I don't even remember how I got out.

― You fondle my trigger then you blame my gun / Kate (papa november), Thursday, 9 June 2005 22:50 (twenty-one years ago)

- I have survived 2 days running of 46degC heat in Sydney in the early 1980s.
- A mini-hurricaney thing tore thru our backyard once and snapped a HUGE gumtree in half, which fell over and smashed all our backyard pergola and sheds to bits.
- On arival in the UK, straight off the plane, I was driven into the worst weather/flooding the UK had seen in many years. It was unseasonally cold (snowing in Birminham in May), and we ended up trapped in floods in Oxfordshire thanks to the car dying from driving over a flooded road. I have never felt so cold, wet, jetlagged and stressed out in my life. Way to welcome me to yr country guys! ;P

― Trayce (trayce), Thursday, 9 June 2005 22:56 (twenty-one years ago)

Oh! And all the bushfires in and around Canberra of course. I missed the worst ones 2 years ago as I no longer live there, but many Canberra suburbs were burnt to the ground, and people I know personally lost homes and businesses.

― Trayce (trayce), Thursday, 9 June 2005 22:57 (twenty-one years ago)

Every year we have at least one thunderstorm that drops a significant amount of rain in a short period of time. That happened the other day -- we had four inches of rain in two hours. We had eight inches of rain in March of 2003 and on Palm Sunday in 1994 and Lake Ella (a shallow pond) overflowed onto the drive surrounding it and the ten-foot tall gazebo was almost completely submerged -- and that's happened in several tropical storms here, too. It's weird because I don't know how the gazebo got so far underwater because it's on a peninsula jutting into the lake where the ground it sits on actually seems higher than the roadway circling the lake.

46 Celsius in Sydney? Weird!

― Ian Riese-Moraine. Exposing ambitious careerists as charlatans since 1986. (East, Thursday, 9 June 2005 22:58 (twenty-one years ago)

Whys 46C weird? Australia gets some mofo heatwaves from time to time, Canberra frequently has 40+ summer days.

And shite, I posted about most of that stuff last time too. Whoops.

― Trayce (trayce), Thursday, 9 June 2005 23:10 (twenty-one years ago)

April 2004 & April 2003 "severe thunderstorms" in Sarasota Fla. 70 mph winds shaking the glass doors and windows of the flimsy beach apt. Ho hum for the locals, scary as hell for us visitors.

March 1974. Tornados touch down about a mile or two from my family's house in Ohio. I saw a pitch-back funnel cloud swirling in the distance, while standing in our front yard. Yikes, Toto!

― m coleman (lovebug starski), Thursday, 9 June 2005 23:15 (twenty-one years ago)

I just never thought Sydney got that hot. xpost

― Ian Riese-Moraine. Exposing ambitious careerists as charlatans since 1986. (East, Thursday, 9 June 2005 23:45 (twenty-one years ago)

Dude it's Australia! We're bakin! =)

Especially now the drought's been so bad every city in the country is about 2 years away from RUNNING OUT OF WATER.

― Trayce (trayce), Thursday, 9 June 2005 23:47 (twenty-one years ago)

handy-dandy translator:

Fahrenheit minus 32 times five ninths = Celsius (and Celsius times nine fifths plus 32 = Fahrenheit!)

― metal assembly (Jody Beth Rosen), Friday, 10 June 2005 10:56 (twenty-one years ago)

Seriously guys - RUNNING OUT OF WATER. Major cities, Sydney and Melbourne et al. If we have 2 more years like now with little rain, we're in deep erm.. dust. I'm a bit worried.

Country town Goulburn's resevoir is at 8% (!!) capacity, they are pretty much out of water already.

― Trayce (trayce), Friday, 10 June 2005 10:59 (twenty-one years ago)

I'm not bright enough to multiply numbers by 5/9 in my head. I had it for a second once on a vacation to Mexico, but lost it as soon as I got on the plane. Now, going back and forth between miles and kilometers is fairly easy for me, especially when the conversion is laid out right there on the speedometer of any car in the United States.

And, I can count how many cricket chirps there are in a minute as well as gauging how far lightening is away from my house.

― Pleasant Plains /// (Pleasant Plains ///), Friday, 10 June 2005 12:44 (twenty-one years ago)

Allright, Tropical Storm Arlene's at 60 miles per hour and cruising through the Gulf in a northerly direction. We've already had some rain associated with the outflow of convection and we're under a tropical storm warning. Sweet.

― Ian Riese-Moraine. Exposing ambitious careerists as charlatans since 1986. (East, Friday, 10 June 2005 17:14 (twenty-one years ago)

70 miles per hour and they keep moving the projected path further east and now the tropical storm warnings have been extended even further east. However, it's going north-northwest now, but we'll still get a lot of rain out of it (despite it having drizzled the entire day).

― Ian Riese-Moraine. Exposing ambitious careerists as charlatans since 1986. (East, Friday, 10 June 2005 23:49 (twenty-one years ago)

6 feet of snow in 4 hours, near lethbridge
tornado in edmonton, that actually destoryed buildings w/i 6 km of me.

― anthony easton (anthony), Saturday, 11 June 2005 08:08 (twenty-one years ago)

"he entered the forest and the phantoms came to meet him"

― mark s (mark s), Saturday, 11 June 2005 12:21 (twenty-one years ago)

count another one for the 98 ice storm.

― Kim (Kim), Saturday, 11 June 2005 17:37 (twenty-one years ago)

1994 ice storm in NJ- we drove up to a ski area early in the morning of the first day, because the weather was looking to be more snow than slush & ice & rain. Hahaha... I mostly remember skidding all over the hill, and I learned how to ski on nothing but broilerplate crappy "snow". After a few hours, we figured we'd drive home... but first we had to chip ice off the windsheild, and the roads were all solid ice. It was pretty insane.

I lived about 45 minutes from the ski area, but I think it took almost 4 hours to get home. Thankfully my friend had a Jeep & sort of knew how to drive safely, but we were really concerned about all the other bad drivers spinning out on the roads. I was expecting some idiot driver to slam into us at any moment. Our school was closed for **4** days. It was awesome- we even went skiing a few other days when the sun came back out & made the roads a little better.

― lyra (lyra), Saturday, 11 June 2005 23:15 (twenty-one years ago)

Two tornados - one in Nebraska and another in Southern Ohio. The latter cut out all the electrics and sent hail (literally) the size of golfballs.

My wife has been in a house during a tornado where

a) A tree came right through her window
b) A car was blown hard into the side of the house
c) Said house then pretty much collapsed and they had to wait most of a day in a pitch black crawlspace until firemen could hack through and pull them out!

― the D Double signal (nordicskilla), Saturday, 11 June 2005 23:20 (twenty-one years ago)

I was also in the big London 1987 storm that everybody mentions above. My dad's car got totally crushed by a tree, but I was just pleased not to go to school.

― the D Double signal (nordicskilla), Saturday, 11 June 2005 23:22 (twenty-one years ago)

Now I'm just waiting for an earthquake...only feel a few tremors here now and again...was reading the David Thomson book about how the last big SF quake made his windows squash into diamond shapes and then back to rectangles again without breaking! Is this even possible?

― the D Double signal (nordicskilla), Saturday, 11 June 2005 23:24 (twenty-one years ago)

Renee from Allo Allo was injured during the storm wasn't he??

Yes! A piece of wood went through his car window and smacked him on the forehead! He still carries the mark!

― the D Double signal (nordicskilla), Saturday, 11 June 2005 23:28 (twenty-one years ago)

A full-on dust storm at Burning Man in 1991 or 1992, I forget (ha-that's how you know I had a good time)

― Orbit (Orbit), Sunday, 12 June 2005 21:42 (twenty-one years ago)

(1) Once, in middle school, we had to go to school when it was -90 F (wind chill). My sister can corroborate this.

(2) Hiking on an exposed ridgeline in the White Mountains in 50+mph winds and blizzard snow. Total riot.

(3) Saw some funnel clouds from my car back in HS in MN.

― giboyeux (skowly), Monday, 13 June 2005 06:27 (twenty-one years ago)

On Christmas Day 2004, I was returning from Leicestershire to Manchester when we got hit by a "blizzard" just outside Stoke. My brother was at the wheel and it came down like the Snow Queen's cape, couldn't see more than about 10 yards in front of the car. It was heavy enough that we saw several other vehicles spinning off the motorway into the barriers.

I'm aware that this is small potatoes for ILE'ers from more northerly climes, but it felt pretty extreme when we were in it.

― Bill A (Bill A), Monday, 13 June 2005 06:35 (twenty-one years ago)

(xpost)...I can't even imagine what winter driving is like for people from more southerly climes. I still white-knuckle it.

Let me add one, actually:

(3) Sitting in the backseat of an Explorer while my stupid friend from Tenn. tore ASS through the snowing, icy backroads of the Northeast Kingdom of VT. They have LOGGING TRUCKS up there. And MOOSE. I almost broke off our friendship after the whole thing.

― giboyeux (skowly), Monday, 13 June 2005 07:01 (twenty-one years ago)

(xpost)...I can't even imagine what winter driving is like for people from more southerly climes. I still white-knuckle it.
Oh fuck, on the rare occasion that it's snowed here, there was accidents galore because most drivers don't even know how to drive through a mere dusting of snow without getting into an accident. Hell, they can't even drive in the rain here and it always rains!

-90 F Wind Chill? Where were you? That's ridiculous. You probably would've been warmer in Vostok!

― Ian Riese-Moraine: exposing ambitious careerists as charlatans since 1986. (East, Monday, 13 June 2005 10:09 (twenty-one years ago)

I was waiting for the bus at the end of my driveway in Minnesota. School was cancelled the NEXT day because so many parents complained to the superintendent.

― giboyeux (skowly), Monday, 13 June 2005 16:32 (twenty-one years ago)

one year passes...

I've just seen the most hail I've ever seen!

― Ned Trifle II, Sunday, 18 March 2007 15:56 (nineteen years ago)

View out of window...
http://farm1.static.flickr.com/182/425339410_345c0c1c8f.jpg

― Ned Trifle II, Sunday, 18 March 2007 15:58 (nineteen years ago)

Gorgeous! But i want to point and click the hail, and make some of them go away

― aimurchie, Sunday, 18 March 2007 16:16 (nineteen years ago)

Volcanic ash.

― Oilyrags, Sunday, 18 March 2007 16:44 (nineteen years ago)

I was listening to Morbid Angel once on a clear sunny evening, and suddenly there was a hailstorm. I took it as a sign, that really I didn't actually like death metal that much.

― jel --, Sunday, 18 March 2007 17:53 (nineteen years ago)

― iiiijjjj, Sunday, 18 March 2007 18:06 (nineteen years ago)

In 1999 a tornado hit my parents home while we were in it. The house was not leveled, but the entire front of it was blown out and our garage completely gone. I was in an interior closet, where it just sounded like being inside of a giant vacuum cleaner, but no bodily damage.

Other than that, several hurricanes that didn't cause much damage other than massive flooding in surrounding areas.

― Jeff, Sunday, 18 March 2007 18:09 (nineteen years ago)

This tornado was part of this system

― Jeff, Sunday, 18 March 2007 18:18 (nineteen years ago)

On Long Island during my childhood - several hurricanes. The one that I remember most clearly and was probably the worst was Gloria. We had to go inland to a friend's house during the storm and it was at least a week before power in our area was restored. Since school was closed, rather than staing in the dark we my parents decided a vacation was in order so we took off to Montreal. That was pretty great in the end.

― ENBB, Sunday, 18 March 2007 18:22 (nineteen years ago)

A chubasco 6 months ago, a tornado came very close to our building and there was constant lightning (I mean constant, it was 2 in the morning and the sky was lit up and had this bluey/violet tint to it, and there were at least 4 or 5 streaks in the sky at any single moment) for half an hour, and a lightning storm that lasted a couple of days. There were landslides blocking the roads and the winds brought up the railway lines, and quite a bit of the town was flooded, and we were cut off from the rest of the world for a couple of days. The town we were staying in was on the national news, and three days later it was still so bad that it took us 4 hours to get to the larger town 5 miles away from ours.

― V, Sunday, 18 March 2007 18:32 (nineteen years ago)

I saw ball lightning once in Northern Virginia during a lightning storm. We were driving south on Route 29 and watched this freaky ball of light bounce horizontally along the ground for a while and disappear. It was over quickly but made quite an impression.

4 years or so ago there was a crazy windstorm here in Oregon that knocked over every telephone pole for five miles in one part of the county.

― sleeve, Sunday, 18 March 2007 19:20 (nineteen years ago)

I flew into Sicily during the worst thunderstorm of the year once. Hairy as hell, especially with two of those sudden drops in height you get in air "pockets" and lightning all around. Brrr.

― .stet., Sunday, 18 March 2007 19:30 (nineteen years ago)

Last week there was a flash blizzard at about six-thirty in the evening. In under a minute it went from no precipitation at all to heavy, thick, wet snow, which went on for about half an hour and then stopped abruptly. It was cool.

― xero, Sunday, 18 March 2007 19:34 (nineteen years ago)

hurricane andrew matchstick collapse

― lfam, Sunday, 18 March 2007 19:42 (nineteen years ago)

My flight from Gatwick to Glasgow got hit by lightning this morning. Last year our back fence got hit by lightning.

― ailsa, Sunday, 18 March 2007 20:20 (nineteen years ago)

what a photo! we just had hail too here in berlin.

most extreme? an antarctic 'herbie', a hurricane/blizzard, blowing snow and -30 farenheit.

― jergincito, Sunday, 18 March 2007 20:23 (nineteen years ago)

eleven years pass...

(check the whole thread)

Strongest typhoon to hit Japan in 25 years
pic.twitter.com/OAdLs3RmGh
— Nature is Amazing 🐧 (@AMAZlNGNATURE) September 4, 2018

― mark s, Tuesday, 4 September 2018 16:05 (seven years ago)

my mom is a very understated person, she doesn't like to make a big deal about anything or cause anyone worry. this was best exemplified in the voicemail i have saved from her which goes something like "oh hi I'm just calling to check in. Hope you're all good, everything's fine here, there's a tornado coming (*warning siren is heard*) so I'm going to head to the basement. I'll talk to you later, bye."

― omar little, Tuesday, 4 September 2018 17:00 (seven years ago)

the winds in tokyo a couple hours ago were intense, had me looking up ready to dodge overhead powerlines coming down, more frightening for the eerie lack of rain and also gusts of wind in a big city are scarier than in the middle of nowhere.

to answer the original question, extreme snow storms and summer storms with visible funnel clouds on the prairies

― XxxxxxxXxxxxxxxxXxxxx (dylannn), Tuesday, 4 September 2018 17:19 (seven years ago)

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