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Those who frequent this new forum obviously love their weather like I do...and I would guess that we appreciate reading about other extreme or crazy weather that folks have had to deal with at some point in time. So, what was the wildest thing you can remember about weather or storms that you have personally experienced so far in your life? Snowstorms, hurricanes, tornadoes, icestorms, etc...anything from any season.
I'll try to get my experience posted here soon...I want to try and find some pics to go along with it!
craziest semi-normal weather is this summer here in San Antonio. Temperatures have been at or below normal for something like 85% of the days and that's just really strange. So far this entire year I've had to water my front lawn once and if I didn't get new sod put in during the two hot, dry weeks we had this year I probably would've never watered the back.. everything is totally green too and in July here it's usually brown and dead or getting there..
wildest weather I've seen ever was when I was on the USS America in the north Atlantic during the storm that they made the Perfect Storm movie out of. We had waves going over the bow of the ship and for those that don't know the America, she was an aircraft carrier... that doesn't happen very often. In order to go on a weather deck below the flight deck you had to have a rope tied to you and it was pretty terrifying. I have no idea how the guys up on the flight deck made it and the pilots definitely earned their flight pay that month... the good side was it turned the ship into a giant rocking chair and I slept like a baby every night
I am happy to say I survived being in the eye of Hurricane Rita for about six hours in 2005. It was the scariest thing I have ever been through in my life My mother has large pine tress and one that was 110 feet tall fell and missed her house (that we were all in) by only a few feet. The house shook, pictures fell off the wall. And of course no AC or electricity is no fun afterwards. I used to watch people on TV and feel sorry for them standing in line for water and ice and now I know just how they feel. But thank the Good Lord we made it through!
The most extreme weather I drove in was on the Kancamagus Highway in NH in January 2004. A sudden snowstorm came up out of nowhere and I think the temperature was lower than -30F with strong winds and -60F wind chills. It was a good thing that the nearest town was not to far away to stop for the night. You always must pack a winter survival kit and have proper gear with you when you travel to the north country in winter. That same month Mount Washington recorded one of the lowest temperatures ever on the highest mountain in the northeast. The skiing and snowboarding were good if you could stand the Alaska like cold that month.
Me and a friend of mine were driving into Halesowen a few weeks ago (here in England) and suddenly at about 2:00pm it went as black as night, the rain was so heavy you could barely see out of the windscreen and all the cars on the motorway slowed down to about 40mph. It turns out there was a tornado about a half a kilometer east of us but because the weather was so awful we never realised until we heard on the news later.
Also I was skiing in the Alps once and suddenly the weather went from pleasant and sunny to a whiteout blizzard. I was in the middle of a big wide piste at the time so navigating my way back down to the mountain cafe was a bit of a challenge but once I made it there I dived inside and drank coffee until it all cleared up again.
My dream though is to witness a hurricane from the inside and see a huge F4 or F5 tornado out on the prairies of the Midwest. I've always loved extreme weather.
Last edited by happynoodleboycey; 07-24-2007 at 07:32 AM..
Reason: typo
It would have to be the sounds of the 200+ mph winds of hurricane Camille in August 1969, hunkered down in the halls of the barracks @ Keesler AFB in Biloxi. Although the base itself came through the storm with relatively minor damage, the surrounding area was total devestation.
I've had a few brushes with extreme weather. I've endured a small tornado while stuck in a storm cellar when I was very young. I lived in NYC during one of their large blizzards in the mid 90s when something like 30 inches of snow fell in a swath from NYC through New Jersy to Philadelphia and on south towards the DC area. You literally couldn't walk in NYC because the snow was piled so high on the sidewalks that you sometimes felt like you were walking in a narrow tunnel as you tried to avoid passers-by.
I would have experienced Hurricane Andrew in Miami but I moved from that area just a month before it hit in 1992.
Growing up in Texas, I've seen my fair share of terrific flooding throughout the hill country and into San Antonio. But the most memorable extreme I ever saw was in January of 1985 when the city was hit with a snowstorm that for Texas purposes, was indeed a storm of the century. 13.5 inches of snow fell in San Antonio and some places in South/Southwest Texas received upwards of 14 inches of snow. I remember the local weathermen on TV saying that there was a potential for maybe some light sleet but nothing measurable would occur. That Friday afternoon, January 11th, it started to rain and the temps were in the mid 30s...it eventually changed over to sleet and continued doing that for a few hours. By that night, it changed to snow and continued throughout the night and into Saturday, Saturday night and finally ended Sunday morning, January 13th. It was great fun but for a city that doesn't own a single snow plow, it was a nightmare and paralyzed the area for a few days. Can't find pics right now but here's a link to snowfall totals for South and Central Texas over that January weekend.
Hurricane Wilma down here was fun , but it certainly was extreme!!!!!!!!!
Also, I drove through a REALLY bad thunderstorm a couple of weeks ago, where it was blinding rain on one side of the highway, and on the other side, nothing. Before the rain hit my side of the highway, the winds gusted to...oh...id approximate about 100 MPH, judging by all of the SUVS pulling over, the tree tilting, and what not. Very comparable to the winds I saw in Wilma, but it only lasted for about a minute. Then, I watched lightning strike a palm tree on the shoulder, and then I watched it strike a nearby hospital, and I kept on watching it strike never further from a mile from me at a rate of about once every 5 seconds for, say, 3 minutes. Then it started to rain, and then it calmed down!
Hurricane Camille, 1969, we got out of Mobile, Ala., a day ahead of the storm.
April 1974 tornados through Alabama
1989 tornado went over our house and set down 15 miles away in Huntsville, Ala. Saw the green and black clouds....wow.
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My mother has large pine tress and one that was 110 feet tall fell and missed her house (that we were all in) by only a few feet. The house shook, pictures fell off the wall. And of course no AC or electricity is no fun afterwards. I used to watch people on TV and feel sorry for them standing in line for water and ice and now I know just how they feel. But thank the Good Lord we made it through!
13.5 inches of snow in balmy San Antonio
, but it certainly was extreme!!!!!!!!!
