Ever experience nature's fury? (1 Viewer)

[Gene Severn]

1. Hurricane Gloria in 1985 tore thru the center of Connecticut. It tore down a 2 1/2 foot oak on our front lawn. Thank God it fell away from the house. When the "eye" passed over things were sooooo calm.

2. Major lightning strike in the neighborhood a few years ago took out some dimmer switches and an answering machine. The home theater and computer were protected. Oddly enough the strike was strong enough to come down the cable TV coax shield and took out the RF section. The cable had a ground block !!!

 

[Dan B]

I witnessed a particularly bad lightning storm one afternoon about 6 or 8 years ago. Lightning struck within several feet of the house on a couple occasions. It sounded just like a shotgun blast! A flame-like blue streak of light erupted from the overhead light fixture in the room I was sitting. (oddly, no damage was done to this fixture...not even the light bulb) We lost the house water pump I think it was & the outdoor light pole, too.
I don't like lightning any more, even though thunder does sound cool.
-Dan B.

 

[Jeff Braddock]

a month or two ago, I was driving home from work during a storm. I was just thinking "Ya know, it seems like there is a lot more streaked lightning now than when I was younger." Then all of a sudden...BAM! Lightning struck in the median maybe 25 ft. (at the most) away. Lightning is very odd looking when it is seen up close.

 

[Mark Frank]

1) I was about 30 miles away from Mount Saint Helens a few weeks after the big eruption visiting relatives. Imagine literally everything being covered by 6" to 12" of ash. Very bizarre. I did see two small eruptions of the volcano as well from Seattle.

2) I was with my family at Cedar Point amusement park in Ohio when I was 13 and a bad storm came in so we took shelter under one of their picnic areas. I looked up and a funnel cloud was descending towards the groud literally right above us. It scared the sh!t out of me because there was really no where to seek safe shelter. Luckily, after getting about 1/2 way to the ground, it dissipated.

 

[Jeremy Stockwell]

A tornado came through our small town when I was around 14 or 15 years old. While I never actually saw the tornado, I remember standing at our front door with my Mom and Dad when a tree in front of our house was blown over on top of one of our cars.

Funny thing was: then my Mom decided that we should go to our basement.

Cool thing was: finals at my school got at least delayed and some got cancelled because a bunch of telephone poles got blown down in the road that led to the school.

I also remember being able to scoop up hail by the handful after the storm.

JKS

 

[TimG]

I am with Ron in one of my experiences, sitting on the front porch after work, lighting struck a transformer about 30ft away. The hair on my body stuck straight out seconds before it hit, then WHAM!, fireworks in June. Sparks everywhere, nearly scared the sh&* out of me. Living in Kansas all my life I have seen probably 20 tornados, the closest being about a quarter mile away. Did "get" to see the damage after an F5 that went through Hesston years ago, just like the movie Twister, cars and tractors 20-30ft up in trees, very "Dali-esque". We routinely get 70-80 mile an hour storms during the spring, there is nothing like being able to stand at a 45 degree angle and being supported by the wind.

TimG

 

[Dave Morton]

I was driving back to chicago from the upper penninsula of michigan in 1999 and there was a huge snow storm. For about 10 minutes I was driving in a complete white out. I couldn't see anything except snow. I couldn't even see past the windshield. There was no place for me to pull over and I was hoping I didn't hit anyone or anyone would hit me. It was the most frightening experience of my life. My hands were glued to the steering wheel just trying to drive straight at about 1 mph. I'm glad there was no curve in the road. I never want to be in that situation again.

 

[Jack Briggs]

The Sylmar 'Quake: I was surprised by the wavy, rolling nature of the event; no jolts, just buckling--and it seemed to last longer than it really did. And even though I was in a groundfloor dwelling, it felt as if the structure swayed.
The Tornadoes: At around 6:30 p.m. CST, after a sunny day of high winds and tornado watches, the front moved through Nashville. Preceding the first sighting, hail pounded the house--some of the ice fragments were about five inches wide. As the dark, blue-gray clouds moved out, the Sun shone on the billowing thunderheads. Looking out the house's northeast window, I could see a milky-white column of sorts obscured by trees--and it hit me that I was witnessing my first tornado. The vortex cloud moved into a position where I could see it unobstructed. It was approximately ten miles to the north, northeast, and it possessed the classic tapered look, twisting and undulating toward the bottom. About five minutes later, the thing became thinner and thinner until it dissipated.
About an hour later, another tornado formed about a mile or two to the southeast--a long, wiry, rope-like cloud that wiggled a lot at the bottom end. The thing moved to the east without seeming to touch down and soon dissipated.
The Whittier Quake: Now, this one was a doozy. It was morning, and I was soaking in the tub (the shower was not working). The window was cracked open. And the first thing I noticed was what sounded like a rush of wind--and then the bath water started sloshing. As the ground buckled, I could have sworn that I heard a buckling-like sound outside--sort of like taking a large piece of poster board and shaking it. This may have been my imagination. The aftershocks, which occurred all morning long, were the most unnerving experiences.
The Northridge Quake: I was living in a terrible, terrible apartment in Hollywood's decrepit Yucca Corridor. What awoke me was the noise outside my window--a prostitute was having a difficult negotiating session with a potential john; the conversation was loud. It was around 3 or 4 in the morning. Just as I decided to get up and head for the kitchen and a glass of water, the thing hit. Within the first second I could tell it was the most severe 'quake I had experienced. The entire apartment was rocked violently back and forth, and the power along Hollywood Boulevard went out—and the light polls swayed. And the sound of destruction was loud. My cat Attila went into hiding, and for a few hours I thought I had lost him. As I groped my way into the hall and downstairs, all the tenants could be seen lined up outside. The destruction was breathtaking. A popular wall mural on Wilcox had come down completely. Glass was broken everywhere; not a single storefront had been spared.
I found Attila much later, at about 10:30--he had been hiding inside one of the bathroom walls, which had come loose during the 'quake.
He and I moved out of the deathtrap apartment in the awful, awful neighborhood thanks to FEMA money that came our way.

 

[Shawn Shultzaberger]

I'm just going to keep this short but:

3 Typhoons on the Island of Okinawa (highest speed attained out of all 3 was 140mph)

1 Hurricane "Bonnie" in North Carolina

1989 Earth Quake near SanFrancisco (my first)

1990 or 1991 big Earth Quake in Los Angeles

LA Riots (I know that doesn't count but boy what a bad day)

 

[RobertR]

Saw a tornado outside my mother's house in Denver in the late 80s. It was only 3 or 4 miles away. What impressed me most was the SIZE of this thing. It was a huge, malevolent, black presence not very far up in the sky. I could see it reaching toward the ground.

The '94 Northridge quake didn't affect me nearly as much as Jack (since I was in Long Beach), but it did shake me up pretty good.

 

[Gary_E]

The first week of August, I took off work early on Friday to play golf. It was a beautiful day. As we started the back nine you could see a front moving up from the south.
As we hit the final fairway the rain had begun.

The sky got twilight gray/black and the wind kicked up to 50 - 70 mph within minutes. The rain came in horizontal, big drops that hurt when they hit your skin. The flagpole at the clubhouse was bent severely, from south to north. It lasted about twenty minutes, then the sun came out and it was beautiful again.

The main roads were flooded with a couple of feet of water. The course was two miles from my house. When I got to my neighborhood, a third of the trees were down, taking the power lines with them. It took eight hours to get power back. Weather reports indicated a tornado touched down within my 2-block neighborhood.

BUT the absolute worst was hurricane Andrew. After the storm, we went down to the area to help rebuild and clean up the mess. I saw homes that had their roofs gone and the drywall missing. The frame and exterior surface of the house stood but everything inside was sucked out of the structure.
Very eerie.

-Gary

 

[Dana Fillhart]

Some of mine include:
• Hurricane Gloria, September 28, 1985 -- I was living in Ocean City, Maryland at the time, and remember vividly almost everything that evening, including the bit about being one of the last families that evacuated the island (there were many who stayed behind but few who left as the worst of the storm arrived). We left right when the winds were getting into the 40's and 50's (with gusts higher) and the rain was extremely heavy, and evacuated to a school about 5 miles out of town (my then-barely-former middle school, as I was in 9th grade). We made camp in the auditorium along with hundreds of others, and while my parents did try to sleep, my sister and I ran about the school and explored, sometimes going outside (and getting nearly whiplashed by the high winds and rain). It was all over in a very short few hours, and sometime in the mid-morning we left to go back into town.
What we saw really shocked us, as none of us had seen anything like it before. The town has a boardwalk that runs from the southernmost portion up 2 miles or so to 27th street, and we lived at 21st street about 200 feet or so west of the boardwalk; there was no sea wall then protecting the boardwalk (and the streets) from the ocean, but this event prompted the town council into action:
Where there was not flooding on the streets, sand from an inch to a few inches thick littered most of them. Boardwalk benches and some trash cans and other large objects littered the roads. Some buildings had windows broken and/or protective boards blown off; most though were okay.
Except those directly on the boardwalk.
The boardwalk had been completely destroyed. Where I lived, at 21st street the entire structure had been flipped and shoved, as if somebody had picked it up and twisted it over as they pushed it -- the brunt of that section had plowed into the motel in front of it (my stepdad has pictures of that, I'll have to scan them some time). Further down, entire sections had been ripped apart and slammed into hotels and homes. Wasn't a pretty sight. Thank goodness our apartment, which sits parallel to the boardwalk but had at the time a buffer zone of 200 feet, a 4-lane roadway, and 2 buildings in front of it, was undamaged.
The inlet parking lot, which is a large swath of asphalt behind the largest width of beach in town, and sits between that beach and some amusement park and arcade businesses, was entirely covered in sand from front to back -- THREE FEET OF SAND. The town had used parking meters up til a couple years ago, but always removed them after Labor Day -- the pole stubs of the meters, which rose about 3 feet, were ENTIRELY COVERED with that sand!
That jaw-dropping sight really was an eye-opener for me into how much raw power there is in nature. It was only 1 of 2 hurricanes I was directly involved in (I experienced one only a few months later in the summer of '86 -- Charlie I think -- but it barely did much more than minor flooding and sand movement). Hurricane Floyd of '99 did quite a bit of damage in New Jersey while I was here, but I saw none of it as it happened.
• The Nor'easter of early 1998 (I *think* it was the '98 year) -- This one suprised the heck out of me, not just for the amount of damage it did, but for its sheer unexpected nature it had on everybody in the area. I woke up very early that morning to the sound of fire truck sirens across the street, sometime around 6am. I peeked out the blind, and through the window dew (and the sleep in my eyes) I saw some activity at the hotel across the street (the same one, I may add, that had been hit by Gloria a decade earlier). Thinking nothing of it, I started to let go of the blind, when I saw something odd -- water flowing down 21st street. At first I thought it was a water main break...until I saw foam and flotsam meandering down with the water stream. Doing a double-take, I looked again and realized what was happening. I quickly got dressed and headed outside, and confirmed my fear -- the damned OCEAN was flowing swiftly down not only my street but the other blocks as well!
I came back inside and found my mom awake; I told her what was happening, and eventually all of us went outside to check it out. I eventually made it up to the boardwalk but it took *tremendous* effort, and it nearly was a mistake, as huge waves were slamming into (and over) the seawall, keeping us pretty much back from the cold and violent ocean front. My grandmother, who had come to visit from the Pittsburgh PA area, was rather shocked at the whole event, and stood with myself bemused as we watched a boardwalk bench float smootly down 20th street, across Baltimore Ave, and toward the main highway. I couldn't believe how much power there was in this "simple" winter storm!
The fire trucks I had mentioned earlier -- they had been called to the scene because some tourists who had come to the town (in the dead of winter, can you believe that??) had been given an extremely rude awakening by Mother Nature when the ocean came over the seawall and slammed into their street-level room, flooding them with cold, salty sea. Gives new meaning to the term "oceanfront", doesn't it?
Seriously, Nor'easters can be VERY dangerous (and awesome) storms to be in.
• September 11th -- while not nature's fury per se, I sadly did witness firsthand the physical results of the destruction to Manhattan that day. Seeing it for the first time you would think you were watching a Hollywood special effect, but it was horrifyingly real. I learned a lot (probably too much) about the physics and engineering involved in the structure of those beloved twin towers...
• The 2001 Leonids -- a positive story, I got to witness the "firestorm" come down in the wee hours of November 18th, 2001. It was the most fascinating natural event I've seen thus far in my life, and I am really excited to see more. Sadly, I did not photograph any of them, but I hope to this year!

 

[Mark Shannon]

On my 7th or 8th birthday, we were in the kitchen having cake, and lightning struck my nieghbour's yard (2 houses away)...knocked out almost all of his electronics, and fried our TV.

 

[Dana Fillhart]

Oh yeah, one other very minor event occurred recently -- during a heavy thunderstorm earlier this summer, I had just come off of Rt. 3 onto southbound I-1/9, and was forced to go fairly slow because people on my side were rubbernecking to watch the stopped traffic on the northbound side. I looked over and saw something that made me blink twice:
Remember the scene in the movie Final Destination, where a live wire was dancing around all about the ground by itself? Think that stuff only happens by Hollywood magic? Think again! I actually witnessed a downed wire, very thick, hopping madly about the ground as its live end glowed fiercely like a welding torch, and sparks flew in all sorts of directions. A telephone pole had fallen into a business sign, and one of its electrical wires had snapped.
I'm rather surprised traffic was allowed to continue, as the storm (which had ended about a short few minutes earlier) had dropped a ton of water in the grass beside the roadway, AND the roadway itself. Fire trucks were only just getting on the scene, but I had to continue.
Freaky-looking, but made me think twice about ever getting near downed electrical lines during a thunderstorm!

 

[Michael*K]

Several years ago I saw a funnel cloud from the Ohio Turnpike. I estimated it to be 4-5 miles away. I didn't stop to "admire" it, though. I just kept looking in the rearview mirror, floored the gas and kept heading west.
I also was on a commercial aircraft that was struck by lightning. It actually left a noticeable hole in the nose of the plane.

 

[Josh Lowe]

I witnessed the full force and the aftermath of Hurricane Andrew. The words do not exist to describe it. I would liken the damage to an H-bomb detonation minus the fire and radiation. Just complete devastation in all directions as far as the eye can see. I lost count of how many 2x4s I saw that had gone straight through trees like darts. Or cars thrown through houses like darts. All the streets in South Miami turned to goo when the sun came back up, because they were covered in tarpaper from roofs.
A friend who was closer to the point where the worst of the storm hit land (a nuclear power plant of all things) said he saw an endless parade of waterspouts and tornadoes come ashore, like an invading army that had landed.
I had absolutely no idea of the power of a Cat 5 hurricane. You can't imagine what kind of force it is. I would recommend reading The Perfect Storm to get a better idea - Junger spent a lot of time going into the meteorology of hurricanes and explained how much energy it takes to power them.. it's awe inspiring when he puts it into perspective. Especially if you've witnessed one firsthand.
I was also around for a couple of minor hurricanes, and thank GOD I didn't have to be around for Hurricane Floyd. Floyd made a sudden northward turn when it was just a few miles from making landfall right in the middle of Miami/Ft. Lauderdale. It came so close that you could see the outer wall of the storm on the edge of the local doppler radar. If that had happened it would have been absolutely devastating. Floyd packed all the power of Andrew but was nearly 3 times the size. I can't imagine what the destruction would have been like if it had hit. It did hit the Carolinas but thankfully lost some of its strength beforehand.
Here's a comparison between Andreew and Floyd..
Link Removed

 

[Scott Leopold]

I was in the Xenia Tornado on April 3, 1974. I wasn't quite 2 yet, but it is my earliest memory. The only memory I have of it is when my mom held us up to look out the window. Oddly enough, the memory I have is in black and white, and it's simply the black funnel a ways off, outside my parents' window. We got lucky because the tornado was actually bouncing. It hit the house behind us, and the house across the street, but bounced right over us. Nobody we knew was harmed in the storm.

A couple years later, a tornado warning was issued. We were still in Xenia, and tornado warnings were not uncommon, but this one was. My brother was staying at my grandparents' house for the night, and we didn't have our basement yet. We decided to drive out there as quickly as we could. While most of the warnings were issued during storms, and didn't upset people too terribly bad, this one was awful. While there was no storm, the skies turned a disgusting shade of green, with a little orange thrown in. The clouds seemed to be boiling and spinning, and every few minutes a little funnel would form then dissipate. My dad was trying to drive his Gremlin as fast as he could, but 35 was clogged with people who had pulled over or just stopped their cars and got out. Some were sitting in the highway weeping, while others were staggering around proclaiming that the end of the world was at hand. It was truly the most surreal thing I've ever experienced. Being 4 years old at the time, this scared the hell out of me. I tried to climb up to sit on my mom's lap, but my dad was too stressed trying to drive through the lunatics and told me to sit down. I did, then stood right back up and puked all over the inside of the car. There ended not being any tornado, and the storm itself was nothing too memorable.

Shortly after that, we had a smaller tornado rip through. Once again, we looked out back. It looked like a thin, gray wisp of smoke snaking its way toward us. We ran back to the bathroom, but it passed over before we got back there. A bunch of insulation was blown down through the vents, and our neighbor's chain link privacy fence between their yard and ours was blown half down. We ran out front and saw it cross SR35 and rip the roof off a house right across the highway.

About 7 years ago, I was still living at my parents house. I came home from work one afternoon just as the severe weather warnings were being issued. When I got out of my car, the air at ground level was perfectly still, but the clouds were moving like crazy. I considered this bad sign number one. I looked up and noticed that the sky was a sickly shade of green--bad sign number two. As I watched, the clouds took a massive turn to the west, then to the south. Suddenly, they doubled back on themselves into a massive funnel cloud, directly above my parents house. I called this bad sign number three, and ran inside. As soon as I did, the rain hit. It was so intense, you couldn't see out the windows. I threw the dog in the basement, got my portable radio going, and dragged a phone to the basement steps. As I did this, I saw that rain was spraying in onto the patio. My parents have an enclosed patio. The wind had bowed in the windows on the western side of the patio, and rain was spraying in--it looked like numerous hoses had been set up at the windows, and a ton of rain was coming in. I did the smart thing in this potential tornado, and ran upstairs to get towels! I ran out on the patio and wiped up what water I could, then set the towels down to catch the rest. As I was doing this, a large chunk of the next door neighbor's privacy fence exploded against the patio. That snapped me back to reality, and I ran down in the basement. The storm ended a few minutes later. Numerous people reported seeing funnel clouds and tornadoes touch down. At the Ryder truck location down the road, one guy watched a tornado touched down and picked up truck, throwing it through a garage door, knocking the guy on the other side across the garage (he ended up in the hospital). The official explanation from the NWS was that it was straight line winds.

I've also seen/heard lightning & thunder in a snowstorm, was in the '78 blizzard, and once drove home in an electrical storm that was so intense I turned off my lights and windshield wipers because there was no point in using them.

 

[Jack Briggs]

Scott: Those were superb descriptions of the storms you saw! Excellent!. JB