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Most fascinating weather events for me are supercell thunderstorms. The structure of these monsters are just awe inspiring to witness especially when they become the classic mother ships.
Now if you are going to hold it to just 1 event, then I would have to agree with the Storm of the Century of 1993.
The May 1-2, 2010 floods. About 14 inches of rain fell at the Nashville NWS station, with some locations nearby getting up to 20 inches. Although the rain fell on May 1 and 2, the bulk of the damage was done from May 2-4.
The following story took place in Sumner County, TN. Saturday, May 1 was the date of my junior prom. I didn't yet have a car or a driver's license yet and I decided that I wanted to go to the prom at the last minute (Wednesday, April 28), so my dad dropped me off and picked me up. The rain was incessant all day, but I don't remember thinking "flood" until that evening. On the way down, 6 pm or so, the roads were wet; coming back, about midnight, one road on my way home was covered in a foot of water at a low spot. Luckily my dad had a Toyota Highlander SUV and drove through it. He later said that if it had been 30 minutes later it would have been impassable. The houses in that area ended up flooded out. When I got home I remember being concerned about a mansion I was scheduled to visit the following Wednesday, turns out that was the last thing I should have worried about, it was on a big hill.
The rain slackened overnight before starting up torrential again the next morning. I started seeing the news reports coming from Nashville. It was then that I realized the gravity of the situation - before I had thought it was a relatively small flood. The Opryland Hotel ended up having water in it ten feet deep. It was really weird seeing the worst of the flood hit under the clear skies on May 3 and 4.
That Monday I started hearing stories about how it had taken several hours for some of the other people who went to prom to get home, and worse, I heard that some of my fellow students' houses were damaged. I remember one family lost their house to the flood. She lived right where the flooded road that me and my dad had passed through was. On the whole, White House was lucky. Nashville seemed to bear the brunt of the damage.
When I was about 11 or so I always saw "flood insurance" commercials and wondered why we didn't have flood insurance. My parents told me that we're not in a flood prone area, we're at a high elevation. We didn't have any damage from that flood in my particular town. I guess they were right, because that was about as bad as a flood can get in our area - a 1000-year flood.
That sounds like a lot of rain to fall in only two days, even for somewhere in the southeastern US. I did look up what the climate is like in Nashville. 14 inches of rain is a pretty good chunk of what the city will typically see in a year. On average, Nashville gets a little more than 47 inches of rain in a year.
That much rain in one storm sounds quite freakish. Ever since record-keeping started where I live, there has been that much rain to fall in a calendar year only six times. Because of this, flooding would've without a doubt been catastrophic in my area if that much rain had fallen over two days.
I certainly hope that no one you're close to lost their lives in the storm. It is really said when you lose someone close to you in a natural disaster like that.
Other than the flooding, I do hope prom was fun. I myself went to prom both years in high school that I was able to, and it was a great experience. Both times I went, it was in April. During April, probability of precipitation is somewhat low where I'm from.
Places that are located at the bottom of hills and other steep-sloped surfaces are known to get hit pretty hard by flood events like this. I'm guessing a lot of surface runoff must've played a role in those deep waters that caused some people to lose their homes. I've heard of many events where this happens, and it really makes me sad just to think about what those people were going through. If there was an opportunity for me to help out, I would've jumped at the opportunity. It makes me happy to help out the less fortunate whenever I'm given the chance to do so.
I also heard that there may have been a few tornadoes associated with the storm. Even just thinking about tornadoes scares me. This is why I'm glad I live in the Western US, where they are very rare.
This was in TN and followed a very warm spell with air coming from the gulf of mexico.
But that weather cycle is very common here, warm air from the SW being followed by cold air from the NW which produces rain or snow depending on the temperature. I think I've heard thundersnow one other time, but not combined with such a memorable snowfall.
Yeah. While thundersnow does often produce heavy snow, it doesn't necessarily mean that heavy snow is guaranteed when thundersnow strikes. There has actually been a few thundersnow events in northern Arizona, but with rather light snow, as there are really no exceptionally large lakes nearby like there is in the Great Lakes region.
Would you happen to know where specifically this thundersnow event took place?
Most fascinating weather events for me are supercell thunderstorms. The structure of these monsters are just awe inspiring to witness especially when they become the classic mother ships.
Now if you are going to hold it to just 1 event, then I would have to agree with the Storm of the Century of 1993.
There are not very many supercell thunderstorms in the southwestern US, but they can still happen nonetheless from time to time. I remember the biggest tornado outbreak in Arizona history that took place in early October of 2010. September and October are the peak months when supercell thunderstorms form in Arizona. This happens whenever any lingering monsoonal moisture interacts with incoming cold fronts from the west. That is exactly what happened in October 2010. As a result, Arizona saw eight tornadoes touch down from the storm, which is double what it usually sees in a year. I happened to be outside when it was raining very hard, and I immediately went inside when I heard a tornado warning sound on the TV inside my house. There was even areas of the Phoenix Valley that saw hail the size of a tennis ball. I would imagine that getting hit by one of those things would not have felt very good.
There were a couple of people that mentioned the March 1993 storm. It was a pretty freakish storm, to say the least, with a lot of locations seeing record March snowfall totals from the storm.
The most fascinating weather event to me was the unusually wet June across Arizona in 1972. This was ironic as the first five months of the year were almost completely dry. June is usually a month where probability of precipitation is very low, and thunderstorm activity across Arizona is minimal, especially in Southern Arizona.
Supercell storm in July 2015. Such storms are rare in my country. Everyone in a 50 mile radius of the storm saw it because it was an isolated storm, and it was in the evening so there was big lightning visible over a wide distance. Lightning every second. Big hail dented cars and caused damage (to those underneath it obviously).
Supercell storm in July 2015. Such storms are rare in my country. Everyone in a 50 mile radius of the storm saw it because it was an isolated storm, and it was in the evening so there was big lightning visible over a wide distance. Lightning every second. Big hail dented cars and caused damage (to those underneath it obviously).
Sounds like the storm was fun to watch, so long as you were inside and didn't suffer any damage associated with the hail. What country are you from, if I may ask?
I live in the UK. The storm passed 10 miles west of my location (just enough to hear distant thunder) but only got severe about 30 miles north-west.
Supercells happen in the UK very rarely, and previous notable events tended to have been daytime ones. The night time storm gave a great lightning show to probably a several million people due east and south of it, thanks to its formation in otherwise clear conditions. The big hail only hit a few places because the storm went over sparsely populated places at that point.
I live in the UK. The storm passed 10 miles west of my location (just enough to hear distant thunder) but only got severe about 30 miles north-west.
Supercells happen in the UK very rarely, and previous notable events tended to have been daytime ones. The night time storm gave a great lightning show to probably a several million people due east and south of it, thanks to its formation in otherwise clear conditions. The big hail only hit a few places because the storm went over sparsely populated places at that point.
Nice! Yeah I heard that major thunderstorms don't really happen in that region because the air is usually not warm enough to produce those kinds of storms. With climate change however, it could make unusual events more common in the future.
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