What is the worst storm you have ever been in?

[Odin2005]

For me it was the windstorms that swept over the Upper Midwest during the Heat Wave of 1995. We got wacked by a derecho 3 times in 3 days. I was 9 at the time and I thought the damn sky was falling! :scared: The second storm was the worst, it hit us in the wee hours of the morning on July 13th and took out several trees in our yard.

[w8liftinglady]

1. about 30 years ago-we had some monster tornadoes in W. Texas

I was in a grocery store when they hit...we all gathered near the Beer and ice cream aisles-we were gonna die happy(or so we all said-we were scared shitless)

[SargeUNN]

2. Tough Question for me but I do have an answer

it would be between Hurricane Camille or Hurricane Katrina. Katrina is my answer although Camille was bad.

[csziggy]

3. 1960 Hurricane Donna

We lived in Bartow, in Central Florida and it came directly over us. Mom was in Alabama with her mother who was dying. Dad was home alone with us four little girls - I was eight years old, my sisters were thirteen, eleven and two. We lived in a 1910 era wood frame house - water was coming through the window frames and the roof was leaking so there was water dripping from some of the ceilings. If the wind caught just right, it came UP between the floor boards. It scares me more now to think about it since that house was just sitting on piers on the ground, nothing but it's own weight holding it down.

When the eye came over Dad went out to the stand alone garage to get some plywood in case the windows blew in. I remember him telling my oldest sister that if he was not back by the time the storm started back up that she was NOT to come looking for him and we should all go into the bathroom and stay - that was the only room with no windows. It seemed forever before he came back - and he went back for another load of plywood. The eyewall hit hard right after he got back in the second time. Sometime in the middle of the night we heard a large WHOMP - the big pecan tree that had been the deciding factor for my parents buying the lot had fallen.

It seemed as if that storm lasted forever - I am not sure how long it took to pass, but by the time it was gone, half our shingles and part of the roof were gone. We didn't lose any windows, but everything inside was damp from drips or humidity. We had no electricity for over a week and no phone for days. Poor Mom did not know if she had lost her family as well as losing her mother that month since she could not get in touch with us or with any friends. Streets were flooded all around town, and many of the town's live oaks were down on roads and houses.

Donna had a similar path to Hurricane Charlie in 2004, but moved much slower, resulting in much more rain and longer duration of damaging winds.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_Donna

I've been through two hurricanes and many tropical storms since, but none have been as ferocious as Hurricane Donna was.

[Odin2005]

4. Wow, that had to have been frightening!

:scared:

[texanwitch]

5. Hurricane Carla in 1961 when I was 7 years old.

The hurricane came on lane not that far from the farm.

I can remember the house shaking a little but it was a tough old house.

The wind was howling around the house and when the eye came over the wind stopped.

The men folk went out to check the animals, some of the cows were hiding in the timber area.

They almost didn't make it back it time.

I wasn't really scared, just to young to know better.

[MicaelS]

10. Wow! Me too, except I was 4 years old.

Blew a big tree over in my grandparents front yard, in a small town about 100 miles from Houston.

[texanwitch]

13. There were 3 teenagers and 6 little kids under 10 in the house.

I remember sleeping on the floor, the adults got the beds.

We played board games and had this epic card game of Battle.

There must have been 5 or 6 decks of cards, don't think anybody won.

Rain did get into the doors a little and the windows were not covered.

The storm did seem to last forever, or it seemed to for a 7 year old.

The house did shake, the wind seemed to go around and around the house.

I am so glad I was so young, the adults must have been really scared.

They didn't show it around us.

I thought about this hurricane while Ike was blowing, the wind sounded the same.

[texanwitch]

6. Hurricane Carla in 1961 when I was 7 years old.

The hurricane came on land not that far from the farm.

I can remember the house shaking a little but it was a tough old house.

The wind was howling around the house and when the eye came over the wind stopped.

The men folk went out to check the animals, some of the cows were hiding in the timber area.

They almost didn't make it back it time.

I wasn't really scared, just to young to know better.


http://www3.gendisasters.com/texas/2497/hurricane-carla-hits-texas-coast,-sept-1961

[doc03]

7. We had a tornado go through the yard when I was like

5 years old.

[jobycom]

8. Hurricane Camille, the worst to hit the US.

In terms of windspeed and pressure and stuff. I was only four, though, so my knowledge of it was limited.

[Lil Missy]

9. The one's in my head. n/t

[Sebastian Doyle]

11. Drove through a tornado in Colorado in 2002

Wasn't even aware I had done so until I saw the local news that night. I just thought it was a really heavy rain storm. Never saw a funnel cloud or any flying houses or cows or any shit like that.

[Prisoner_Number_Six]

12. There was this whiteout blizzard in Ohio in the late 70s

It lasted over 3 days & nights. I was stuck alone in the top half of a farmhouse a mile outside of town. When it was over they had to bulldoze the roads open. It took me 6 hours to dig my car out of the snow drift and several more hours to clear the packed snow and ice from the engine compartment.

The house never once lost power.

[doc03]

15. The winters of 1976 and 1977 were brutal n/t

[madrchsod]

19. i lived in an old farmhouse those yrs....

snow was blowing between the floor and the quarter round and around some of the widow frames. 70 below wind chill

[kayakjohnny]

55. Yes they were.

Took my first road trip around the country in Jan/Feb of '77. By the time I reached Colorado it was bad. Got to Glenwood Springs and it was buried. Icicles were hanging from roofs to the ground and were huge. Like hundreds of pound each huge.

A giant cloud of steam rose from the hot spring pool over town for days and nights. We couldn't even go skiing cause there was a massive blizzard blocking our way. Thick snow was on the ground all the way to Junction and the Utah border.

Haven't seen it like that since. Ever.

[lukasahero]

37. The Blizzard of '78

"While a typical nor'easter brings steady snow for six to twelve hours, the Blizzard of '78 brought heavy snow for an unprecedented full 33 hours"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northeastern_United_States_blizzard_of_1978

I was 15 and lived in RI. I can remember shoveling snow that was over my head. My neighborhood was shut down for just over two weeks. Cars were stranded (and buried in snow, sometimes with people in them) on major thoroughfares. 100 people died.

New England has over-reacted to every prediction of snow ever since.

[Kat45]

54. Yup. I lived in Mass. during the Blizzard of '78.

Everything was shut down for a long time.

[OmahaBlueDog]

14. Hurricane Wilma

90+ MPH winds and $12K damage to our house. Power out for two weeks.

Worst impact of a storm I ever saw - South Dade County after Hurricane Andrew. We were living in Broward, which just had downed trees. Dade looked like a war zone.

[fishwax]

16. the may 3rd tornado

Fortunately I wasn't directly in the path. Hard to believe it's been 11 years ...

[Glassunion]

17. I brought on a pretty bad shit storm once.

I'll never talk back to a VP again.

[madrchsod]

18. wind shear in 73 or 74

started in austin minnesota and ended a few miles south of where i live in northern illinois. a very strange storm.

[Lindsey]

21. Hurricane Cecila, August 3, 1970 in Corpus Christi, TX. I was

12 y.o. There were a lot of tornado's with that hurricane. I will never, ever forget seeing our neighbor's garage being completely flipped to its roof. The town looked like a disaster. Absolutely scared the crap out of me. I can't even imagine what it was like for the people who were in Katrina.....

[Initech]

20. I was flying ONT - DFW - BNA and there was a horrible thunderstorm in DFW.

It was so bad that they had diverted us to Abeliene, Texas. Where we sat on the tarmac for nearly 4 1/2 hours. I wound up missing my connection by two hours.

[w8liftinglady]

26. and in Abilene,of all things(I used to live there)

[mcctatas]

22. same here...

the worst part was the aftermath though, no power for 5 days, flooding and trees down, hail damage to repair... :scared:

[tXr]

23. Hurricanes Alicia, Rita, Ike, and tropical storm Allison.

[AllenVanAllen]

28. Same here.

[angel823]

38. another veteran

of Alicia, Allison, Rita and Ike here - for me, Ike was the worst.

[Courtesy Flush]

42. Allison was a surprise

It actually killed more people than most hurricanes do. It just wasn't expected to be such a big deal. No one evacuated or anything. We all went to work that day, like any other day, expecting lots of rain, but not expecting Allison! My 35 minute commute home took over four hours.

[Curmudgeoness]

49. Hurricane Alicia for me, in Houston. I wasn't living there for the rest,

thank god. From the midwest, they looked much worse, and Alicia was scary. No water for 4 days, no electricity for 8 days. Missed the water badly.

[denbot]

24. Hurricane Floyd 1981

I was on a Guided Missile Destroyer when she turned in to us. Sustained 60' seas, I almost died climbing down a ladder from the signal bridge to the bridge wing.

[PJPhreak]

25. Greensburg Ks Tornado,sorta...

Stopped to fill my truck at the little Conaco Truck stop there about 30 min.before the Beast hit,three hours afterwards it looked like nothing I've ever seen in my life.



Ya'll see the white square in the middle of the pic on the right side of the highway (US 54) that was the Truck Stop.

[struggle4progress]

27. Hurricane Fran 1996

I live about 150 miles from where hurricanes usually make landfall in this state. When a hurricane hits, we usually get some clouds and some rain -- and then all the hot wet tropical air makes the town muggy

But Fran was a completely different story. It was a huge storm -- hundreds of miles across. So when the edge of it hit town, the storm was still picking up power from the ocean

It started to rain and blow here the afternoon on 6 September, and it rained and blew all night

I have a V-shaped drainage ditch in front of my house that's several feet wide and several feet deep: usually a really hard rain might give 6 inches of flow in it for an hour or so: with Fran, the ditch was overflowing by sunset

The rain and wind fuggin howled all night. We had something like 40 mph winds -- not gusts, winds -- for hours. Inches fell. Trees breaking and falling over woke me repeatedly at night

In the morning, nobody anywhere around here had electricity or phone service. The neighbors' car was flattened by a tree. I thought, I'll drive over to this office in a nearby town (about 40 miles away) that I have a key to, and I'll call family to let them know I'm OK. But once I got there, I couldn't drive any of my usual route: major roads were an impassable mess of toppled trees and utility poles

I had no electricity for nearly two weeks

[old mark]

29. A rain storm while driving on I-95 in North Carolina in 1970. It started raining and just kept

raining harder and harder, till I could not even see the end of the hood of my car! I slowly tried to fine the shoulder of the road and when I heard and felt the tires on gravel, I stopped and put the flashers on till I could see again. I could see NOTHING but rain for well over 5 minutes, was waiting to get hit by another car...

I have been in terrible snow storms, high winds, etc, but nothing that came out of nowhere
and scared me so much...


mark

[JustABozoOnThisBus]

30. Hazel in '54, Elena in '85

Hazel killed a little over a thousand people, mostly in Haiti (poor Haiti again, yikes). Then it killed almost a hundred in the U.S. and another 80 or so in Canada. I was just a kid and it gave me nightmares for some years, something involving swirling trees and a birdhouse bashing the windows.

Elena wasn't as big, but was sitting off the west shore of Florida when I was driving out of there. The rain was so hard I couldn't see much on the freeway. There was a truck ahead of me, so I put my tires in the squeegeed tracks it made and just kept going. Driving was scary, stopping was scary, so I just kept driving. I was so glad to get into Georgia, where it was just normal rain.

[SargeUNN]

45. Elena was a bad one for sure

I also went through that one. I lived close to Pascagoula Ms. at that time. It was a scarey storm, but little did I know what would come later, Katrina. One of the reasons I don't want to go back to my home area among others is the Hurricanes like Camille, Elena and Katrina. I think I have done enough of that.

[TZ]

31. Had to evacuate a lab I was in.

The big reinforced glass windows were SHAKING....and you literally could not see anything outside of it. And since all our work benches were right up next to the windows......Yikes. We heard later that there was a possible tornado maybe 2 miles down the road from us. I beleive it.....

The second worst was more for the winds...When hurricane Isabell went through here I could not sleep after the winds started they were loud. I sat in my kitchen and watched the sky light up blue AND RED from transformers blowing up--it was a constant display. I still have never ever seen anything quite like that around here

[Crystal Clarity]

32. Impact-wise....The Ice Storm of 1998

I've been through a confirmed F1 tornado... which was very scary to me for the few minutes it was occurring. But tornadoes are rare here and the one I went through touched down on a very small area and did little damage... Just a few downed trees; one of which landed on my neighbor's car, but that was about it.

The Great Ice Storm of 1998 was a different matter entirely. It wasn't "scary" but wow, the aftermath was incredible. We were one of the lucky ones since we live near an elementary school therefore were without power for only 5 days. I knew people who went without power for nearly 3 weeks in sub-zero temps. Fortunately most people around here have woodstoves, but still, it was hard on them. For example, most had well water which rely on electrical pumps... so no water was probably one of the biggest issues for them. Especially for people who owned livestock. Also downed trees and power lines made most roads impassable for days and even weeks.

I remember the days following the storm as being almost surreal. Only one radio station still had broadcasting capability, all the others having downed towers and damaged equipment. And most of that station's personnel were unable to make it in to relieve the poor DJ of his duties for several days. When it became clear to the DJ that he alone was the only one capable of disseminating important emergency info to all the battery powered radios tuning in, he abandoned the station's regular format and basically became the 'emergency info guy'.

People who were still able to use their telephones would call in live on air, desperate to know the well-being of elderly loved ones and asking neighbors of these folks to please check in on them. Some would use the station to report which roads were now passable... Others were offering up their homes for warmth for the people who didn't have woodheat, while still others were offering the use of their generators. Probably about half the calls were people trying to find out when the power company was scheduled to come to their town. Many would gleefully report seeing power company trucks working nearby.

The Governor also used the station to update everyone daily as to the status of the situation. For ex. he (the Gov) reported early on that President Clinton had approved a 'State of Emergency' status thus allowing for the National Guard to be activated. He also would report things like which out-of-state electrical linemen crews had arrived to help, or when they were due to arrive.

It felt to me very much like something out of an apocalyptic, or cold war attack movie because of the devastation and the hard-to-come-by information. Out of State linemen crews were treated like heroes with people offering their homes for warmth, hot meals and warm clothing since many of these poor guys from warmer climates came woefully unprepared for the bitter cold we had in the weeks following the storm.


North American ice storm of 1998
From Wikipedia

Storm type: Cyclonic system - mixed ice/snow/rain
Formed: January 4, 1998
Dissipated: January 10, 1998
Maximum amount: ~5 inches (120 mm) (freezing rain)
Damages: $5-7 billion (2005 USD)
Fatalities: 35 deaths total, 28 in Canada 945 injuries
Areas affected: Ice in Atlantic Canada, southern Quebec, Eastern Ontario, northern New York and northern New England; rain/flooding in the Appalachians

Meteorological synopsis

A series of surface low pressure systems passed in this atmospheric circulation between January 5 and January 10, 1998. For more than 80 hours, steady freezing rain and drizzle fell over an area of several thousand square miles of Eastern Ontario, including Ottawa and Kingston, an extensive area in southern Quebec, northern New York, and northern New England (including parts of Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine).

Impact

Many power lines broke and over 1,000 pylons collapsed in chain reactions under the weight of the ice, leaving more than 4 million people without electricity. The loss of electrical power also greatly affected pig and cattle farmers, as they could no longer provide water or adequate ventilation to their barns full of livestock, leading to the death of many animals. Many barns also collapsed under the weight of the ice, killing the animals trapped inside.

Millions of trees were brought down by the weight of ice around the affected areas. As many trees were damaged or fell by the heavy ice, the maple syrup and orchard regions suffered heavy blows and massive losses in the storm.

Roughly 700,000 of Maine's 1.2 million residents were without electricity, the Maine National Guard was mobilized, and hundreds of utility crews from as far away as North Carolina arrived to help.

Three weeks after the end of the ice storm, there were still thousands of people without electricity. In Quebec alone, 150,000 persons were without electricity as of January 28. Estimates of material damages reached around $2 billion Canadian for Quebec alone. Overall estimates are around $4-6 billion US for all the areas affected. Damage to the power grid was so severe that major rebuilding, not repairing, of the electrical grid had to be undertaken.

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_ice_storm_of_1998"

[femmocrat]

39. The Blizzard of 1993 "The Storm of the Century"

Storm of the Century
Blizzard of March 12-13,1993

Brutal winds and intense snow were characteristic of the blizzard which brought Pittsburgh to a standstill on March 12-13, 1993. This storm, which closed airports and highways alike, produce snowfall with rates of 2-3 inches per hour. Pittsburgh temperatures reached a record low of 1 degree. The total snow accumulation was a shocking 24.6 inches. In the blizzard's two day period, one-third of the total yearly snowfall for 1993 had fallen. (Total snowfall in 1993 was 76.7 inches.) Pittsburgh residents were advised to stay off the roads and indoors if possible.

Snowfall of this magnitude constituted an emergency situation which required immediate disaster relief. Public Works met this challenge by plowing and removing snow, salting streets and checking for icy conditions. Crews worked around the clock to restore safe driving conditions, and Pittsburgh streets quickly returned to normal.

http://www.city.pittsburgh.pa.us/pw/html/blizzard_of_1993.html

Note: Not sure how quickly things "returned to normal!" Our power was out for 4 days; some were out for 2 weeks. This is the storm that came up through Appalachia and had record low pressure.

I also remember the Blizzard of Jan. 1998, when we had 30 inches of snow and the schools were closed for 2 weeks. All we did was shovel, shovel, shovel. It was like Siberia.

[Crystal Clarity]

41. I remember that storm

Even though it happened south of us, I remember it well because my loser brother-in-law had been extradited to Indiana from Maine for a felony charge of not paying his child support. Hey, my sister, in a mind boggling lapse of judgment picked him... not me :shrug:

At any rate, my BIL was picked up here in Maine and sent down to Indiana in a van full of fellow losers. They ran into that storm head on somewhere in YOUR state (if I remember correctly). The driver being from Indiana(?) and apparently not used that type of weather lost control of the van and they went off the road. Though they were all cuffed, one prisoner escaped.

Long, boring, (and weird :crazy:) story short, the guy was recaptured, the losers put up in a nearby jail overnight while the van was being fixed, and then off they went the next day. Anyway, that, and the fact that the national news kept talking about the storm at the time is why I remember it.

As a somewhat unrelated sidenote: I've admired the state of Indiana ever since for it's aggressive stance on dead-beat parents.

[suninvited]

33. Hurricane Ivan

in 2004 in Pensacola.

[rurallib]

34. I remember those storms now. Got a funny story

When they came through my area I was just leaving work. It got really dark fast. Someone hollered out the door to get back inside.
So I went back to my broom closet sized office. My office was a designated tornado shelter, so I had about ten others in there.
Amongst the crowd was a new management trainee. Huge storm going on outside and this guy says "I better check on my renters insurance"
Well naturally we all laughed. He wasn't kidding. Electricity was out, so he took a flashlight, looked up the number and called his insurance guy in the middle of this horrible storm.
We could all hear the insurance guy when the management trainee asked about his insurance
- "Are you NUTS! You don't call somebody in the middle of a tornado unless it's an emergency!" Click.

[Odin2005]

47. LOL, that's hilarious!

[raccoon]

35. Hurricane Gracie, Sept. 1959. Hit Beaufort, SC, and moved inland.

At the time, I was a kid. We lived maybe 40 miles inland from the ocean as the crow flies. I still remember hearing trees being uprooted as they was blown over by the fierce wind. We were without power for three days.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_Gracie

[hobbit709]

36. Weirdest was one night in West TX

My brother and I were on our way to Big Bend. We were out on the highway about 3 AM when the thunderstorm hit.
About a hundred yards in front and behind us the water was about a foot deep going across the road. There was so much lightning that the hair on our arms was standing up. Every time the lightning flashed, I could see the back of the semi stopped in front of me and the sticker on the doors of the trailer that said "EXPLOSIVES"

So I looked at my brother and said "If we're gonna die we might as well be stoned" So I rolled one up and lit it.

About half an hour later the storm eased up and the water went down so we went on to Big Bend

[Tuesday Afternoon]

40. a tornado in 1973.

[Jokerman]

43. Palm Sunday tornado outbreak 1965.

I was watching a tornado track directly toward our house when my dad grabbed me and whisked me off to the basement with the rest of the family. The tornado skipped over our house but the front windows of the house were blown out. The window I was standing in front of had a huge tree branch pushed through it.

I also have vague recollections of driving by a trailer park the next day and seeing house trailers stacked up like dominoes.

Wikipedia says that the one I saw was an F4:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1965_Palm_Sunday_tornado_outbreak

[TheMightyFavog]

44. Summer: a few years back we had a tornado warning for our area...

Just radar indicated, no actual tornado, but the storm knocked out power for a few hours.

Winter: The Early December Blizzard last year. Local schools were closed for two days, we got over a foot and a half of snow in about 24 hours.

[dixiegrrrrl]

46. Great question.

February 13, 1979, Whidbey Island, Wa.
Huge wind storm winds of 80 miles per hour gusting to 120 miles per hour hit..
It took down the West end of the Hood Canal bridge .


I was living in a very old genuine log cabin on a bluff overlooking Puget Sound.
The logs were huge. Place was as solid as brick.
Below me on the long beach below the buff were a lot of vacation/beach houses, some of them
in mid-construction. The whole area had fir and cedar trees 100 feet tall or more.
The wind was hitting the cabin head on. I watched as all the lights on the opposite shore went out.
then hunkered down and listened to trees fall, hoping none would land on the cabin.

Roads were blocked by fallen trees for 3 days, power was out for a week.
All the houses on the beach were damaged, most of the semi-construction houses were just gone,
blown into the sound.
I had a fireplace and lots of wood, thank god.
Whole Puget Sound area got hit hard, I could not even leave the Island for my job for a week.

In terms of loss, the worst was here in Ala. 1995 when Hurricane Opal changed direction unexpectedly in the middle of the night.
I went to bed at midnight, secure in the forecast she would be hitting further west.
I woke up to an answering machine full of friends yelling to " Get out of that place"
which was a trailer in the middle of woods. I slogged thru ankle deep water to the car,
took the back roads to another town 40 miles west, to stay with friends, and as I crossed the freeway overpass, I could see a solid 4 lanes of cars heading north trying to evacuate from Mobile and other gulf cities.
But they were not moving. Total gridlock. Many of the people sat the storm out in their cars on the freeway. ( which is why you either leave EARLY or else stay)
Hurricane blew all afternoon and night. Incredible noise of wind howling, trees crashing,
and out in the dark always lurked the possibility of a tornado.
When I got back to my trailer 3 days later, it had 7 trees on it, and one very wigged out cat in it.
( she never was the same afterwards, would dash under the bed at the slightest sound of wind)
I was homeless for a few weeks, because rentals are so hard to find in this area.

Stayed with a friend, had to work every day, lost all my furniture because of rain and then mold.
Back then, FEMA actually worked and this FEMA guy kept following me around,
trying to give me 1,000 bucks.
I finally took it for a down payment on a house in the town where I am now.

Thank god I was in another state when Ivan hit here.
.

[guitar man]

48. May 3 1999 Oklahoma Tornado Outbreak

There were tornadoes everywhere that day...

[applegrove]

50. I was in Hurricane Juan in Halifax about 7 years ago. I actually went for a walk

by the harbour in the hours before (it was supposed to hit landfall away from the city of Halifax..turns out it was a direct hit on the city). It was raining and the rain really started to hurt with all that wind so I went home. When I got back to my apartment the cat desperately wanted me to hide in the closet with him. He was about 5 years old and hadn't been through a hurricane before ...but he knew it was dangerous. Once I had closed all the windows the cat was okay. Next morning when I went outside there was a chair way up a tree and tons of damage to big huge old trees. Many of them didn't make it through the storm because it being rocky their roots were shallow. It was all so surreal.

[txwhitedove]

51. Hurricane Katrina, 1-block from beach in Bay St. Louis, MS.

[Terra Alta]

52. Hurricane Hugo, 1989

I was eight years old and my family lived out in the sticks.. we were without power for a week and a half, and my elementary school gym was destroyed.

[darkstar3]

53. 2006: The Summer Storm that Could. AKA: Ameren's Chickens Come Home to Roost.

Picture this...

It's Wednesday evening in the middle of July. The sun is skidding down to the horizon through a haze of humidity and exhaust. Everyone keeps talking about how hot it is and how the weather keeps calling for rain but it just won't come. You and your downstairs neighbor pass each other on the stairwell, casually commenting on the weather, and one of you says "well, with any luck it'll rain and finally cool off."

You should be careful what you wish for...

As the dinner plates finish clinking in the sink and you and your family settle down to watch the latest Netflix, the sunbeams coming through the living room window disappear. Drawn by the fact that it's two hours too early for sunset, you look out to see roiling black clouds moving in from the west. You head for the backyard for a better view, and realize something nasty is going on when the screen door is ripped out of your hand by the wind.

30 seconds in the yard is enough for you to realize it's time to go back inside. The wind is bending trees at angles not usually seen, and fully green leaves are flying through the air. Tornado sirens are sounding from several points in the distance, and the western sky looks like a scene from The Core as nearly nonstop lightning seems to bounce between clouds. You head back inside to keep your eyes out the window and your ears on the radio for the slightest hint that it's time to head for cover.

As the storm rolls in and raindrops the size of hornets begin pounding everything in sight, the street in front of your house turns into a river. At times, the lightning comes so fast and furious that you can count at least 5 strikes every second, and the thunder is one long, ominous rumble. 10 minutes into the storm every house on the street goes dark, and it takes half an hour more for the continuous rumble of thunder to finally subside to the occasional distant growl. As you go out onto the sidewalk to survey the damage, you realize it's going to take quite a bit longer to get the power to come back. Damn if you didn't just go grocery shopping...

In the aftermath of the storm, we learned the following:

As the storm rolled in, the temperature dropped 20 degrees in less than an hour.
At one point during the storm, we were getting the highest level of precipitation capable of measurement on doppler radar.
In some places, the storm dropped 5-6 inches of water.
The local emergency services received more reports of downed trees and power lines after this storm than any other in their recent memory.
Over 600,000 people in the area lost power (some estimates said 1M), and it would take over three weeks and the combined effort of utility workers and trucks from at least six midwestern states to return power service in this city to normal. (9 days for us.)

The days after the storm were some of the hottest of that summer, adding insult to injury for those whose air conditioners were, like their power, out of commission for a very long time. And speaking of adding insult to injury, a second storm, almost like an aftershock, rolled through the city two nights later, giving a great big middle finger to the utility workers and knocking over 300,000 people more off the power grid.

Now, if those numbers seem appalling to you, they should. Storms don't generally put over 1 MILLION people out of power at one time unless they involve record amounts of ice in New York. The reason for this incredible damage to our electrical infrastructure was also revealed to us in the aftermath of the storm: AmerenUE, the local utility, hadn't been bothering with tree trimming for the better part of a decade. It seemed that, even though they regularly filed for rate increases, they didn't feel it was necessary at the time to spend precious budget funds on proper preventative maintenance. Ameren's chickens had finally come home to roost, and it was once again the consumer who paid the price for poor planning on the part of a company who forgot it was there to SERVE the needs of its customers.

[tinymontgomery]

56. On a Navy LPD

late 90's got out in front of a hurricane, swung around the back side the hurricane stalled around Norfolk and the staff didn't realize it and drove us in to the backside of it. Bunch of sailors hurt with broken arms, forward end of the catwalk was bent up at a 90 degree angle, acomm ladder buckled and copiers broken from their bolts and a lot more damage.

[elehhhhna]

57. Ike. Slept thru it. Got a new roof.

[marigold20]

58. Amazing hailstorm in Helena, Montana during the 80's

The sky turned an incredible green - the hail was softball sized and broke windows, damaged our roof and siding, and stripped all the leaves from the trees. The smell of bruised vegetation was overwhelming. Of course we put hailstones in our freezer.