Well, with Katrina receeding and Rita looming, I thought this was an appropriate question. If I am too soon, moderators, feel free to delete...
I went through Irene, a Cat 1 Hurricane in Lauderdale back a few years ago. (looks)1999 says the internet and I believe 'em :). My plane was grounded and they put me in a hotel for the night. The hotel put me on the 7th or 8th floor and I rode it out. According to the news, the eye went right overhead. It rained a lot and it was windy, but we were somewhat inland and it wasn't so bad. I finally got out of there the next afternoon about 6PM.
I was more scared at a snowstorm I almost got caught in back when the wifey and I were youngsters together. 1980 or 81, maybe? We just had to go to my parents house for Xmas and it was snowing like crazy and I was going down the road and got stuck in a 10 foot drift over the road. We walked in some real freezing cold and found a house with some folks in it and rose out the night. There were some other people there so we had a real sleepover. But I didn't know how close a house would be (country road), so when we got out of the car I was pissed at myself and scared cause of Mrs AWA. Turned out OK.
We'll be back right after order has been restored here in the Omni Center.
We were coming back from my great aunt's house in Plymouth, CT, and I was going north on I-84. I was in the diamond lane (had a passenger with me), and it started to POUR. I literally could not see more than five feet in front of the car. Being in the diamond lane, I was isolated from any kind of shoulder or breakdown lane. So I slowed down to about 30 miles an hour, put on my hazard lights, and hung on for dear life. When the lanes finally converged, I got over to the right as quick as I could and pulled over. Definitely not the worst storm I've ever been in, but the most scared I've ever been in a storm.
"He is the most overrated piece of crap in the league. He bitched and whined after he got his ass beaten in New England last year, so the NFL changed the rules. Then he got his ass beaten in New England again. Every year he's the top MVP candidate. Every year he's supposed to be the best. Every year he's going to carry the Colts to the Super Bowl. And every single year he goes to New England and gets his ass beaten. And his brother's a whiny little bitch." -A friend of mine, on Peyton Manning
The one-two punch of Hurricanes Fran and Ivan last year hit pretty hard even in the N.C. mountains. We got floodings, mudslides, roof damage, road washouts, etc. Fran made for a rough, spooky night.
"To be the man, you gotta beat demands." -- The Lovely Mrs. Tracker
In order, the rain storm of July 4, 1969 in Wayne County Ohio. 17" inches of rain in 8 hours with about a dozen dead from flooding. Flooded our basement to a depth of 5'.
Two a tornado in 1994 accompianed by sofball size hail.
Three, the blizzard of 77 in NE Ohio. Snowed in at the college I worked at for several days.
Four, the blizzard of 78.
Five, the 10 tornados in our KS county Memorial weekend Friday in 1993.
There was a huge storm a month ago that made me feel as though I was drowning...while I was walking forward along a sidewalk. The winds were blowing the hard rain into my chest which made it feel as though I was walking into a pool or body of water. That was quite a rush, admittedly.
The tornado in April 98 that hit Nashville and caused a shitload of damage. It totally destroyed the place I used to get my haircut for years. We had no power for about 2 weeks. I remember I stayed home from school that day it was raining and about 75 degrees at 6:15 that morning. They cancelled school the next day(Friday) because of no electricity and broken windows.
I remember watching T.V. and saw the tornado coming. It didn't hit my house or anything but it still scared me have to death. One of the main images was the flag on the capital and the middle was tore out of it.
Hurricane Isabel. Being from Wisconsin, I was used to storms of the snow variety but hurricanes are really something. She was only a Cat 1 when she hit, and the wind and rising water were pretty impressive to me. A huge tree fell behind my apartment building and didn't damage a thing--it could (should?) have fallen right through my upstairs neighbor's and my living room (where I was sleeping on the couch--my mom: "What were you doing sleeping near a window during a hurricane???")...I still don't know how it managed to miss everything...
I can't even imagine going through a storm like Katrina or Rita...
"The ballplayer who loses his head, who can't keep his cool, is worse than no ballplayer at all." --Lou Gehrig
Hurricane Floyd in 1999. I don't know what category it was, but it did very nasty things to New Jersey, and my apartment ended up in 6 feet of water (and it was a good 4-5 feet above ground level. Obviously most of my stuff was ruined. I lost my record collection and lots of personal letters and information. Also things like my PC and my furniture, but people were very generous to me in replacing stuff like that that could be replaced.
Also, driving in it that day was horrendous, and there was one moment where I was skidding toward an 18-wheeler and didn't see how I was going to make it, but I managed to get control of the car.
On a happier note, there was one time where I was at my friend's place on the Jersey shore and we went swimming while there was a hurricane on its way. What a rush!
My junior year of high school I lived about 1/2-mile on the Fitchurg side of the Westminster/Fitchburg-line. We had what they called at the time a "microburst" that basically created a hurricane out of nowhere for 15-20 minutes, then went away, and it was the damndest thing I've ever seen weather-wise. It took us three hours with all of the back roads and trees down to make the would-be ten minute-drive from our house to downtown Fitchburg, and people were just walking around downtown, with no streetlights working or anything. One lady was killed when the steeple of the brick church at the northeast corner of the town center fell onto her car.
"You know what you need? Some new quotes in your sig. Yeah, I said it." -- DJFrostyFreeze
Most definitely the Halloween blizzard of 1991, when 31 inches of snow fell in about 24 hours. While snow in October is not out of the question in Minnesota, it's usually nothing more than an inch or two and melts pretty quick. But this pretty much came out of nowhere and shut everything down for a day, aside from a few stray trick-or-treaters.
The 1996 nor'easter. That's the only time I've ever looked out my living room window and not seen anything because the falling snow and accumulations were so bad. We got about three feet of snow that January weekend...
smark/net attack Advisory System Status is: Elevated (Holds; July 5, 2005) It's good to see that the WWE isn't backing away from Batista or Cena. There's still some questions lingering over a few of the draft moves they either made or didn't make (Jericho being a prime example), but the stage is set for a solid run to Summerslam that may send the indicator down. The longer Triple H stays away is also a plus...
I'm sort of torn trying to decide. 94's Hurricane Opal scared me; it was a category 4. I was living just a few miles away from where the eye made landfall. It knocked out power for a few days, and getting anywhere in town was miserable. Our house lucked out. But Frances, last year, spooked the hell out of me, probably because I'd been a homeowner for less than a year at that point. Before I evacuated, I walked to an outside corner of my house and hugged my house goodbye. At that point, Frances looked larger than the whole goddamned state. Luckily, she turned away from my area at the last minute (then headed for the area to which I'd evacuated; nice). For a storm that missed, I've never seen so much debris. In this respect, it might have been worse than Opal. I live in an older neighborhood with a lot of trees, and there were pines down all over the place... one smooshing the bejesus out of a Cadillac. I had tons of oak branches broken off and lying in my front and back yards. Thanks to borrowing a chainsaw, I had good oak firewood for the whole of winter thanks to Frances. "All winter" isn't saying much, but I at least had enough where I could bank up huge fires in my outdoor fireplace and sit out there in an overcoat and read for hours, piling on more logs whenever the firelight dimmed.
The blizzard of 2003 (AKA Snowstorm Armageddon). My friend and I were in Roanoke that weekend for an annual party we go to. We decided to come home early Sunday (heading north) to beat the blizzard. What is normally a 2 1/2 hour trip was 8 hours...the last 60 miles we were going 15 mph down I-81. I was driving while my friend was halfway out the window knocking ice off the windshield wipers. It was insane.
"Oh, I'm a sad little man? I've thrown a bloody kettle over a pub...what have you done?"
Snowstorm wise, the Blizzard of 96 was a disaster. The ice was worse than the 3 feet of snow, but the combination of both and living on top of a hill = bad news.
My city got directly hit by two hurricanes in the same summer a few years back. That really sucked. The aftermath of having no electric is worse than the storms themselves, though.
I survived every "El Nino" for the past 30 years. Roughly a seven year cycle here in So Cal. Yeah, that's about it...
We have devastating earthquakes though!
(edited by The Guinness. on 5.7.07 2243)
edit...I almost forgot..Firestorm 2003 was really bad down here in San Diego. Not your traditional storm but it caused a lot of havoc (and has "storm" in it's media title)! Getting evacuated was a very surreal experience. We were safe and all. However I could see flames over a nearby hill in Mission Trails that stretched over 30 feet high. Nuts!
(edited by The Guinness. on 5.7.07 2246) "In Soviet Russia, site fucks you." - drjayphd
Yeah, like when you're thinking about a plate of shrimp and someone says "plate" or "shrimp" or "plate of shrimp," out of the blue. No explanation. No point in looking for one, either. --K