"What is the worst weather you've experienced?" Topic

In your life, what is the worst weather you have ever experienced?

Worst mixture was 20 or so years ago while doing the Three Peaks challenge in North Yorkshire…

We had snow on the top of Penygent
Blazing Sun on the top of whernside

And finished off in mist and rain on the top of Inglebrough

All in 12 hours on midsummers day

Chris

Winter of 1978. Snowed so much here that the highway was down to one lane. The snow was higher than the top of the car. The highway dept. had to cut places to pull over in case a car was coming from the other direction.

I stayed with a fishing party in a boarded up cabin on stilts, on an island off ft. Myers, Florida during a hurricane. The 1st day was like a really bad thunderstorm, the 2nd day (when the hurricane hit) we all thought we had made a huge mistake by staying and were going to die. The Cabin was swaying and shaking, and if you stepped outside the rain felt like needles hitting your skin. 1 of our 2 boats got wrecked and the dock was swept away.

The 3rd Day everything calmed and the fishing was great, I caught a 110 pound tarpon!

Artic Circle NATO Exercise. Deployed on the USS Forrestal and waves were rolling over the bow. I can't even adequately describe the weather; it was more a constant feeling-literally zero gravity.

A year of drought. No rain is no joke.

Gale force, or hurricane force winds (didn't have a meter), at the point of the entrance to Emerald Bay, on Lake Tahoe. The precipitation was blowing sideways, instead of down from above, at a very sharp angle (60% – 70% from the vertical).

Decided to go play eskimo on a lark, in the middle of Winter, and build a snow cave as a shelter. What could be a better adventure?

That was back before the internet was widely used, and easy access to future weather news details for areas outside your immediate location.

No snow at lake level, so had to hunker down under a tarp, in a synthetic (luckily) sleeping bag, rated for extra cold conditions, and rented for the occasion.

Filled up with about 50% water, during the storm, but helped save my life, I suspect.

Wind was howling down off the mountains, threatening to blow my kayak away. Had to wedge it between some trees and hold on to keep it in place. Tarp ripped to shreds.

Most miserable, coldest night of my life.

Next morning though, the slight warmth from the sun, as it rose over the horizon was wonderful, as was the view.

Paddled back to the vehicle, drove home, and got a very long, hot shower.

The most extreme was Toronto ice storm of Dec 2014. The street were chained in terrifying beauty, everything was under and inch of ice. The old trees' branches were exploding under the weight. Some people did not have power restored for a week.

Hurricane in Puerto Rico, blizzard in Minot ND, earthquake in LA. Damn, I need to find somewhere safe to live.

Sailed between two waterspouts on the Mediterranean, having booked deck passage on a rusted-out Greek freighter in the the winter of '84.

It was . . . unpleasant.

Softball sized hail; Chugwater Wyoming
Tornado: Hastings Nebraska
Zero visibility snow and wind: Spencer Iowa, Sheridan Wyoming

The hail was the most sudden and alarming, but able to continue driving to get out of it.

Was in a thunderstorm once where it rained frogs. No joke. But worst was either the Winter of 78 as Tom notes above or the time I was within a mile of a F4 tornado.

Bay of Biscay. Was drifting in and out of asleep but dreaming of rolling backwards downhill. It was something daft like a force 9 with a seriously big sea. I'd seen ferries had been green over to the bridge that evening.

Landing in a 90 mph cross wind was lively. We hit on one wheel set and then it felt as if we went up and about 50 yards sideways before we dropped like a stone and both sets of main wheels banged up really hard on their limit.

Typhoon in the Pacific north of the Philippines while deployed on USS Oriskany. As I staggered across the hangar deck a wave swept across drenching me to the knees. The hangar deck is 2 decks above the waterline. Quite the roller coaster ride.

Mardi Gras, Nawlins '88 ('89 mebbee). Ninety degrees and about ninety percent humidity. Marching in the Endymion parade in US Navy Service Dress Blue uniforms having been in two feet of snow with 20 knot winds in Ohio the previous day.

Southern Germany 1982 or 83? minus 42 degrees C. and a stiff wind.
Exposed hands and in at least one case a face (the poor guy ended up gruesomely scarred) froze to anything metal. Trucks wouldn't start unless pre-heated with a blow torch.

Hair, especially when damp, simply broke off. Breathing was painful.

North Atlantic in January on the USS Joseph Hewes (a frigate.) No one was allowed outside without orders. No hot food for three days. Ship rolled so badly we almost lost the radar. When we pitched more than once someone in the top bunk would end up hovering in mid-air between the bunks and end up hitting the deck!

Beijing 2012 First a week of 45 degrees Celsius( 115f) with intermittent blackouts and air pollution so bad you had to stay in . Then 12hours of rain resulting in 18" of rain

The streets were flooded within minutes with over 40 killed 60,000 plus evacuated from flooded homes and a billion RMB in damage The cause was not a river but he inadequate water control system f Beijing and the failure to clean drain openings

Beijing is the capital and is supposed to have the best emergency response in China

Got caught in a blizzard while in hunting camp. Stuck for a week at 6500 ft with actual temps in the -35 to -50 F range. Still hunted five or six hours a day, just had to dress for it, but couldn't gut the game we shot, it'd freeze too hard to safely use a knife.

Hurricane Katrina August 2005

I was in Hurricane Gloria in Boston in 1985. That was exciting. I saw on tv that some people went to Revere Beach to get close to the power of the ocean. I assumed that they were Cthulhu cultists or something.

That's probably the most severe weather, although I didn't suffer anything other than inconvenience. My girlfriend and I taped our apartment windows and made sure we had new batteries for our flashlights and some extra water and food that didn't require cooking. We stayed indoors until it was over.

Hurricane Agnes around 1974, rained buckets for a week and caused once in a lifetime flooding.
Spent on the beach in a condo a tropical storm, actually walked out on beach wind was amazing but probably only 40mph.

A tornado when I was about 4 years old in Michigan, it took the roof off of our house and 3 or 4 homes on the opposite side of the street were leveled. Yes it sounded like a freight train, we had a basement and were down there and it was a very frightening experience.

Hurricane Agnes for me too. I live on a hill do was not affected beyond the rain.
Had a problem driving home in another hurricane, and my son got called up in the Guard to do whatever it is they do. Not much he said.

Huddled against the wide of a stone church as a tornado passed over. I was driving back to college (15+ years ago) and that was the only cover I could find when things got bad. Two years ago, another one missed my house by about 100 yards. I think I may be attracting them.

Hurricanes Andrew, Frances & Katrina.

Hurricanes Hugo, Ivan, Katrina, Opal and others.

2 tornadoes. 1 ripped across our land and tore down an old barn. The second just ripped shingles off the roof.

Blizzard of 76 when I was a teenager in New Hampshire. I had to jump out my 2nd storey bedroom window with a snow shovel to dig out the door. We got 6 feet of snow in a couple of days.

17 straight days in Gale Force 7 – 9 conditions in the North Sea off of Norway shadowing a sub. There were more then a few times when the bow went under we didn't think it would come back up! None of us got much sleep in that time! All the hurricanes since then never bother me a bit!

The blizzard of '78 in Massachusetts and the three day ice storm in '98 in Maine

10-11" of rainfall in 2-3 hours. Most in the 1st hour while driving up from the low coastal region of western Costa Rica into the mountains towards San Jose (Range Rover). Visibility dropped to the hood line… couldn't see the hood front edge that is to the front. Followed a local bus in front up the road grade, turns and all. If the bus flashing light disappeared I would stop since the bus just went off the steep drop off at side of road. The road gutters were completely full… thats 2 feet plus of downhill rushing water at roadside opposite the steep drop off. All made it… but was nerve racking time for 20 minutes. Should note there was no turn offs on the climb available. Would have needed a boat to use them.

Superstorm Sandy; the Oakland Hills fire was weather exacerbated, I guess.

Phillipines 1991 in the middle of a typhon….a volcano erupted.

Hurricane Agnes as a kid, lost count of the 4-5' blizzards, but the worst was the Chorwon Valley in the ROK in Feb 1985. Blizzard conditions with zero visibility. Don't know how cold it got because the thermometers only went to -40F.

HMCS Columbia, summer of 1974. Swells 30 ft high, standing lookout on the bridge wing. The forward turret was buried in water, once the swell hit the forward superstructure it flew up over the bridge. If I didn't duck in time, full in the face. The whole ship shuddered every swell. I wondered if she would recover each time.

Flew into severe turbulence on a moonless night over the South China Sea in a C-141 and thought that the wings were going to snap off. We got banged around pretty good for about 20 minutes. Really thought we might not survive.

I'd rather face any bad weather on the ground than in a plane.

Some years back a tornado touched down in Brooklyn. On its way there it passed close by the Lower East Side of Manhattan where I was walking home. Sky turned yellow, wind came up. Lightning crashed near enough to set off all the car alarms on the block and my hair stood on end. Then the sky opened and it was like a fire hose. It didn't last long but got my attention more than super-storm Sandy, which took our power down for 4 days.

Hurricane Sandy. HUGE bummer.

Don

9/12/01 hurricane in east Florida. Yes the day after 9/11

Blizzard of '78 in New England. I left for work at 6:30 AM, arrived at work in Boston at 9:30 AM, told to go home at 9:35 AM and got on the last bus out of Boston to where I lived and got home at 6:30 PM. My wife worked at the local hospital at that time and they sent a snowmobile to the house to pick her up for work two days after the storm. My office was closed for a week and a friend never got home and spent a week at a Stop and Shop bagging groceries to pass the time. After the storm passed drifts were about my back door and I had to dig out of the house.

" My office was closed for a week and a friend never got home and spent a week at a Stop and Shop bagging groceries to pass the time."

I love that!

I think it was in July 1993. I was working as instructor in a youth camp in the Pirineos, in Northern Spain. The camp was sited near a river, the Cinca. It is not a big river but it run strong, with the melted snow from the mountains. I think it was about one week in the camping when the mother of all storms broke lose on the valley where the camp was located. I can't quote inches per square, nor how long the storm last. I only remember working the whole night in the middle of water and rain and terrified young kids, trying to salvage whatever we could from our belongings and most importantly, to check that all the children were accounted for. You can't imagine how swollen the river descended with all that water! It was a nightmare. It was summer but when we were finished and rescue services arrived most of the instructors and some children were suffering mild cases of exposure. I was freezing!

Sandy…………..13 days in the dark.

Mirrored ice in Warsaw, winter 1992. There is not much precipitation in that part of mid-continental Europe at the best of times, and often it comes in the middle of the night. So in minus 24 degrees (centigrade, that is) the surface sheen of water froze in place overnight and the whole city was like an ice rink made of frictionless glass. It was unbelievably dangerous; according to the local newspapers, one woman lost an arm when she slipped, fell and slid twenty feet into the path of an oncoming tram…

2001 Charlotte Michigan USA, surround by three Tornados that interrupted me as I kissed my ass goodbye.

Fortunately we don't get many hurricanes around here, so weather experiences end to be related to precipitation.

Hard to pick just one, done North Sea storms (in a sailing boat), blizzards (driving, running), ice storms (not common, but they do happen here), roads disappearing under snow etc.

I guess one of the most spectacular was Cumbria a few years back (2009?) when we had 12" of rain in 24 hours. Lake Windermere rose 6 feet. As the lake is 13 miles long, that is an awful lot of water….

But at the end of the day it is just rain, and not life threatening winds.

That's the thing about the British weather – it's usually rubbish, but rarely actually tries to kill you….

I'm not sure I can top surviving a typhoon, but I did survive Hurricane Agnes. The water was so high on the Potomac River that the falls disappeared.

At the other end of the spectrum I was in Death Valley in June a couple of years ago and it was sunny, dry and 120 degrees (49C). Yes, it was a dry heat – just like sticking your head in an oven. (The record for Death Valley is 136F or 58C, so I can't really complain)

Here in Cincinnati,been through the April 3 1974 tornado outbreak and at least another in 1990,the 1978 blizzard(in Columbus,OH),other severe snowstorms and ice storms,remnants of Hurricane Ike a few years ago(with a power outage-which only lasted 24 hours in my neighborhood,others it was up to a couple of weeks before power was restored; extreme heat wave back in the late 1990's,with 100+ degree F temps for over a week straight.

Short term, several times in youth and young adulthood – wildfires out of control on other side of what is now La Habra Heights hills viewed at night (supposed to be sleeping, right.) They did not order evacuations as much back in the day.

long term – multiple year drought in Los Angeles in childhood.

John the Greater and others, yes, once the desert (Mohave in my experience IIRC) gets above 105 degrees the "dry" heat is a killer of the inexperienced or foolish. What is the saying about Mad Dogs and Englishmen? Without AC or lots of water shade just lessens Hell to a Purgatory level of experience.

Nature has no sympathy.

Katrina, although I was caught out in the bush near Chu Lai by Typhoon Hester in October 1971 and rode out the first half in a hammock and the second half in an improvised shelter made of crates of live artillery rounds. I think "terrifying" sums that up pretty well.
LT