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I come from a climate where thunderstorms are rare but not totally non-existent. We hear a thunderclap maybe three times a year and have a true thunderstorm (never intense though) maybe once every 2 years. In 2012, we had two of them (the larger one being in April and the smaller one being in early September). People went to the window and enjoyed the show, laughing and cheering on the thunderclaps and flashes in the sky.The only one I know who doesn't enjoy thunderstorms is my dog who shakes and hides under the bed.
If you live (or had lived) in a place without thunder, was your experience the same? Also, I have never experienced an intense thunderstorm before. Is it scary? I've had someone tell me most Californians would freak out in terror if they saw a mid-west style thunderstorm. If you grew up in a thunder-less climate and then moved to one with thunderstorms, were they scary at first? Or did you find them exciting?
I want to experience a big time thunderstorm just to see what they like!
Yeah. I'm from Oregon, so it's the same for me. Thunderstorms are really rare.
While visiting in Arkansas many years ago, we experienced one of those big-time thunderstorms. Sat in the doorway of our hotel watching, enjoying the show. And it went on ... and on ... and on ... and on. We eventually went to bed, only to get up the next morning and have it still going on. The streets were flooded, water running everywhere. Nothing like I'd experienced before (or since). It was awesome, in the true meaning of the word, but not scary.
I've experienced the Florida 3-o'clock storms, too. A PIA, to be sure, in what was supposed to be Sunny Florida, but not nearly as awesome as the Arkansas one.
I like it here. I was a square peg in a round hole in SoCal. I loved countryside, wide open spaces, peace and quiet and changing seasons. Not so much there. Now that I live in the boonies in South Dakota I've got all that. Sometimes more than I bargained for. The weather was a cataclysmic shift. I'd dealt with snow before when I lived in the mountains, but the cold and the wind was hard to live with for the first year until I got acclimated. The first time we had a severe thunderstorm my eyes nearly popped out of my head. I'd never seen anything like it.
It was a culture shock. I was prepared for it but it still was an adjustment. In some ways I fit in well here, and in other ways I'm very different. I have learned not to talk politics or religion unless I want a heated debate. On all other matters I'm pretty much on the same page with the locals. I am polite and respectful, I didn't show up trying to change things or criticize the local way of life... I just try to go with the flow. I've made lots of friends that way, friends that I wouldn't have expected to make and who are very different than the crowd I ran around with in SoCal. I am a flaming pinko liberal and they are, um... very much right of center, so we just avoid politics and talk about horses, weather, rodeo and how our gardens grow (or don't grow, as the case may be).
I am also bored with the dull climate of California and crave more "interesting" weather BUT I could never live in a place where the culture is conservative. I prefer liberal, open-minded people and big cities (I'm bored with Suburbia). I can see myself moving to a four-seasons city on the East Coast in a few years after I finish school and have a good paying job (I live with my parents now). I'm thinking of maybe trying one of the following cities: NYC, Boston, Chicago, maybe Seattle or Portland. If I was to go rural, I'd probably go for Maine or New Hampshire as I know they are more liberal than the midwest or great plains.
As for your first severe thunderstorm, did you actually hide in the closet or basement or were you actually able to "brave it out" at the window and watch it?
I've seen how people new to California react to earthquakes; I'm perfectly calm with a 5.0 and they are freaking out.
So I would compare our mild, occasional "baby-thunderstorms" here in California as being similar to a 3.5-4.0 earthquake, big enough to notice but harmless. A change of pace but not the least bit scary to anyone. A person who's used to earthquakes wouldn't notice. A person who's never experienced one would be like "COOL, the ground shook," but not be scared cuz the shaking was so minor.
We had a decent sized thunderstorm in April of 2012- still tame by Midwestern standards but a good show of thunder and lightning and the biggest one that I can remember- It was a lot of fun for me but one of my friends got a little nervous driving home in it. A night to remember: Thunderstorm shatters records - SFGate
I am going to say this is the equivalent of a 5.0 on the Richter scale- enough to scare someone who has NEVER experienced thunder before but not an event for someone who's used to them.
The storms you're describing sound like the equivalent of a 6.0 on the Richter Scale. Scary, but manageable for people who are used to it and know what precautions to take and downright terrifying for those who're not used to it.
The most severe ones that spawn tornadoes sound like the equivalent of a 7.0 earthquake or higher, scary for all, damage likely with injuries and death even possible in the wrong circumstances.
What do you think of my comparison scale?
Last edited by AdriannaSmiling; 03-19-2013 at 08:58 PM..
Ok- the damage and injury part is where I draw the line
That's quite sensible. I for one love severe weather but I don't love the property damage and injuries - ideally one should be able to experience severe weather without having anything damaged, and to a large extent that is possible if you take precautions and stay vigilant.
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As for a "scary" Midwestern/southern style storm, I still think id enjoy watching one it as long as I'm not in a danger zone. Will try to visit Florida sometime in May to sightsee, theme park, and hopefully experience a "scary" storm- will follow forecast closely to make sure I'm in a safe place when it hits As for my wussy dog, I think he's afraid of the noise because he does that shake and hide thing every 4th of July when fireworks go off as well..same with the smoke detector, car alarm, etc.
I've experienced all sorts of thunderstorms, ranging from totally dry to torrential downpours, from loud thunder to distant rumbles, from a length of 10 minutes to 60 hours*, from blue lightning to pink lightning, and from damaging winds to no wind. Generally, one gets used to them. I've seen dogs bark at thunder, but if usually there is repeated exposure without any damage or psychological trauma, they become less bothered by it.
*The 60 hours is the length of time there was intermittent rumbling in the distance, obviously not caused by one thunderstorm cell.
I think your comparison to earthquakes is pretty accurate.
Well I had a strange dream last night where it was around sunset time and the sky was all kinds of red/purple with great thunderclouds building then all this intense pink lighting started shooting from the clouds and I was videoing it. Then for some reason a bright flash of lighting happened and a great burst of fireworks came shooting from the clouds and exploded into loads of pretty colors.
I've lived and mostly grew up around areas with maybe one or two per year ( Victoria, BC primarily ) and I love thunderstorms; they're exciting for me. I've never found them scary, even though I possibly should given in some areas I've lived in tornadoes are a real possibility.
As for your first severe thunderstorm, did you actually hide in the closet or basement or were you actually able to "brave it out" at the window and watch it?
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What do you think of my comparison scale?
The scale is a pretty fair assessment.
I had just moved here a couple of weeks before and had come from looking at land with my real estate agent, who told me we don't get tornadoes in western SD so a home with a basement wasn't a priority. I stopped at a truck stop in west Rapid City and watched in bewildered fascination as the sky turned black, then greenish. It looked bruised. Street lights came on (in the middle of the afternoon) because it was so dark. The clouds swirled and churned. Then sirens started going off. I hadn't heard that kind of siren--just a single sustained note--before so I wasn't sure what it was. I stood there taking photos of the storm with the camera I'd brought to take land pictures. The wind picked up. A car stopped next to me. The windshield was broken out and the hood was dented in. The driver said, "You might want to run from that. There's baseball-sized hail in this storm." Then a funnel cloud popped out of the sky. Turns out the siren was a tornado warning. I was only a few minutes from my basement apartment so I zoomed home, grabbed the cats and hid in the closet until the sirens stopped. No tornado damage was reported because it dissipated before hitting a populated area, but a lot of cars got totaled from hail. The hail missed us, thank goodness. The wind and lightning were intense and I'd never seen clouds like that. It would have been beautiful if it hadn't been so destructive.
If I'm out and about I try to take photos of storms that I encounter if it is reasonably safe to do so. I've gotten some good ones. At home I usually watch storms from the living room window. But if the lightning gets too close (thunder is immediate and sounds like a gunshot instead of a rumble) or the hail gets too big (anything over the size of a large marble) I back away from that window. If a tornado warning is issued I grab the pets and head for my hidey hole under the basement stairs. The sirens aren't always audible from my house so I have a weather radio that sounds an alarm. It is loud enough to wake the dead, so there's no worry of sleeping through it. Tornado warnings are fairly rare though. Mostly it's just one heck of a light and sound show.
Also, I have never experienced an intense thunderstorm before. Is it scary? I've had someone tell me most Californians would freak out in terror if they saw a mid-west style thunderstorm. If you grew up in a thunder-less climate and then moved to one with thunderstorms, were they scary at first? Or did you find them exciting?
I want to experience a big time thunderstorm just to see what they like!
I live in a place where we get TONS of thunderstorms, are some of them are super-severe!!! I mean the ones that destroy houses, cars, roofs, etc. The ones that flood the entire city and there is A LOT of material damage. Yeah, we get plenty of those, i say several of those a year. Actually, last one we had was in february, it completely destroy one supermarket and several cars/appartments in one specific neighbourhood, apart from roofs, cars, flooding, and all the usual stuff in the other neighbourhoods. One week after the storm, the national weather service come and said it was actually a TORNADO , and thats why that specific neighbourhood suffer it more than the other ones, the tornado go through there and destroyed it all!! Last april, when we had a HUGE one too, they also said it was a tornado. But we get plenty of the ones that are not tornado and are huge thunderstorms anyway!! Id say once a month we get the huge ones, maybe more.
I dont find them exciting but scary....i do like sometimes like to see how they paint the sky, but i enjoy this in the regular storms, the HUGE ones we get often i dont enjoy so much, i live in the last floor of a building and it seems like my building SHAKES when this happen!!! And then its very sad to see the news the next day and seeing so much damage. And sometimes you can get caught in one of this storms and its not funny: i got caught last april in the TORNADO and i lost my flip flops and almost die in the street, but luckily i only had to walk two blocks to get where i had to go when the storm started, and i got caught in one last november: it took me 5 hours to get home: i was at about 3 miles from my house, in other neighbourhood.
I guess they dont get those "destroy all it touches" kinda thunderstorms we get here, cause, believe me, you wouldnt love them so much if that was the case!!!
I guess they dont get those "destroy all it touches" kinda thunderstorms we get here, cause, believe me, you wouldnt love them so much if that was the case!!!
That doesn't seem to be worse than something like the June 2012 derecho, so my guess is that you're just oversensitive (no offense intended). One man's awesome adrenaline rush is another man's nightmare. 22 fatalities out of millions impacted is very low when you think about it (0.002% at most), and although there was a lot of damage, the vast majority of structures were intact, so I'd hardly characterize it as "destroying all it touches". Power outages and damage are not great, but the actual experience with the wind and the lightning must have been great for those storm fans who witnessed it. As I said before, we like the actual thunderstorm, but not the property damage, fatalities, or power outages; and to a great degree these disadvantages can be mitigated, as these low fatality rates demonstrate.
It should also be noted that what we're talking about is the uppermost echelon of severe thunderstorms. Most severe thunderstorms do not cause nearly that much damage, and most don't have any fatalities, either. Aside from minor property damage, most severe thunderstorms serve to get the heart pumping and causes a sense of wonder at the power of nature.
True, if you go out in it there is risk, but if you stay vigilant and watch it from a window, there is virtually no risk from most severe thunderstorms. If you hear a freight train sound coming toward you, if you're in the center of a tornado warning, or if you see trees being uprooted in the distance then you should definitely take cover, but in most cases hiding in the closet isn't necessary. Risk can be managed, and if it falls short of the "take cover in the closet" scenario, then it's just fine.
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The weather was a cataclysmic shift. I'd dealt with snow before when I lived in the mountains, but the cold and the wind was hard to live with for the first year until I got acclimated. The first time we had a severe thunderstorm my eyes nearly popped out of my head. I'd never seen anything like it.
, i say several of those a year. Actually, last one we had was in february, it completely destroy one supermarket and several cars/appartments in one specific neighbourhood, apart from roofs, cars, flooding, and all the usual stuff in the other neighbourhoods. One week after the storm, the national weather service come and said it was actually a TORNADO 
, and thats why that specific neighbourhood suffer it more than the other ones, the tornado go through there and destroyed it all!!
