Call me Ishmael

[Jokasti]

So, we got tornadoes, we got floods, we got lightning. It's really crazy right now. So we're bunkering down for the night. Worst parts over but still bad.
Have you ever been in a natural disaster or just a really bad storm before?

[druid91]

Yup, had a hurricane pass over but it wasn't that bad, I wanted to go outside and play in it.

[Cobalt]

When I was like, eight (or something), my house was in the middle of a hurricane that I can't remember the name of. Don't recall if I was scared or not, but I do recall the tree in our front yard smashing down onto the second floor of our house.

[Flickerdart]

I sailed through a storm once. In a positively ancient boat that was leaking a bit. A fix was quickly engineered from a pack of gum and duct tape and served for a little while. Aside from that little bit, I felt like a total badass and recommend it to everyone.

In an older incident, I slept through a hurricane and awoke to find an old, huge willow knocked down through the cottage fence and nearly smashed into the window to my room. It took forever for that thing to get removed.

[Mathis]

During a mountain-hike we were ambushed by a particularily nasty storm and got stuck in the fog for nearly a day. The fog was so thick we couldn't see 5 metres and so it blocked out the guidestones that have been marked for those travelling without maps and compasses and so leaving us without any landmarks.

Fortunately the fog did lift, but only when the rain and winds picked up. The wind was so powerful the rain came at us horizontally and we could lean against it at some pretty gravity-defying angles. This would have been pretty cool if it weren't for the icycold rain and knowledge that we still had a fair bit to walk until we reached our destination. A warm shower never felt as good as it did when I got home from that trip.

[onthetown]

My friends and I have played in hurricanes and blizzards over the years. One of the blizzards we were out in was so bad that the adults almost sent out a search party until they realized we had finished building our snow fort and were rooting through the cupboards for rations for it. :smallamused:

[druid91]

During a mountain-hike we were ambushed by a particularily nasty storm and got stuck in the fog for nearly a day. The fog was so thick we couldn't see 5 metres and so it blocked out the guidestones that have been marked for those travelling without maps and compasses and so leaving us without any landmarks.

Fortunately the fog did lift, but only when the rain and winds picked up. The wind was so powerful the rain came at us horizontally and we could lean against it at some pretty gravity-defying angles. This would have been pretty cool if it weren't for the icycold rain and knowledge that we still had a fair bit to walk until we reached our destination. A warm shower never felt as good as it did when I got home from that trip.

Sounds like an awesome time for a stroll to me.

[Mathis]

Sounds like an awesome time for a stroll to me.

Indeed it was, but the goal of the trip was to take some pictures of the mountains from the highest top. We thought this was a good idea because the weather was so sunny (haha, the irony did strike us afterwards). In hindsight the trip was one of the better ones we made and we still talk about it with smiles on our faces. It was one we'll never forget.

This is a picture of one of the mountains we wanted to photograph, only we wanted to take pictures from an even higher one and down instead of looking up like everyone else did.

http://i862.photobucket.com/albums/ab182/martinand1990/1100_bitihorn_ver2.jpg

[druid91]

Is that snow? or is it the color of the rock? and is that a tower on top of the mountain?

[Mathis]

That's snow, and there is a small watchtower on the top.

[Winter_Wolf]

I've been through a few typhoons before. Those are just nasty things when you own property. The wind actually forced the rain through my wall. My concrete, 30cm thick wall. Well okay, maybe it forced it through the silicon-caulked spot where the window met the wall, but still, that's some kind of crazy weather in my book. The next three days we had what I call "the canals of Nanhui", because the drainage system just wasn't built to cope with that amount of water, and they had to get a firetruck to siphon the water away so people could actually walk instead of wade. Let me tell you, the water was FILTHY.

Four images of the 'day after' of the first typhoon in the new home (and yes, that's about 1 meter of standing water):

http://www.box.net/shared/static/ucppmagny5.jpg
http://www.box.net/shared/static/0phz69tusm.jpg
http://www.box.net/shared/static/6u4j8uchnr.jpg
http://www.box.net/shared/static/8x3ho8h6xi.jpg


(edit: one of the pics wasn't loading for some reason.)

[ForzaFiori]

We've had the arms of a couple hurricanes hit, but nothing worse than a strong storm. However, there have been a couple tornadoes touch down, though none close enough to do anything except hold me in school for 45 minutes (it would touch down RIGHT before school gets out)

[deuxhero]

2004 Atlantic Huricane Season. 1 knocked out the power (which killed the aC) which was the worst part, though I live above sea level, so the lack of power was the only issue.

[Zevox]

Nah. Closest I've come is having to drive to school through some pretty bad snowfall, with the roads piling high with the stuff but no plow having come through anywhere yet. Which was not fun, to be sure - on at least two occasions my car slipped out of control, but fortunately I never hit anything - but not "natural disaster" or even "really bad storm" level. Of course, it was frustrating that the class wound up basically canceled that night, since the professor didn't get there until 45 minutes after it was supposed to start due to the storm, by which point everyone had given up on him showing and gone home already.

But yeah, I don't think we really get much in the way of natural disasters here in Michigan. Worst I think we theoretically can is tornadoes, and even those are rare, and none has ever been all that close to me.

Zevox

[tonberrian]

Nope. I actually missed the worst storm to hit locally in a couple of years.

I was overseas in Spain, but August 2001 we had a really bad windstorm hit here. Knocked over the huge locust in our yard.

Yes, I was overseas during 9/11.

Other than that, all's we've had were a few really heavy snowfalls (President's Day 2003, Snowmageddon). I also lived through the Blizzard of '93, but I couldn't tell you anything about that.