What's the most severe weather/natural phenomenon you've encountered?

 

I was about three blocks from a tornado in Tampa, FL a while back. I was the last car coming down Rt 89 from Payson, AZ, to Phoenix in a massive snowstorm on Good Friday, 99.

 

As a long haul trucker, I've had a few encounters with mother natures pms. The worst was in Oregon on I-84 going over Cabbage. It's about 6 miles of 6.5% grade. Not really a bad piece of road normally but that night in January, with the road already iced up a couple of inches and a fog so heavy you couldn't see your hand in front of your face....well....it was a pucker factor of about 10.

Went up the hill weaving from road edge to road edge and going around the supered curves but not able to even see you were on a curve, felt like the truck was going to tip right over, not to mention the front end slide. Talk about vertigo.

The other most memorable would be going across Wyoming 30 to 80 east one winter night. Couple inches of ice on the road, snowing sideways (snow never melts in Wyoming, it wears out blowing around) and 87 below 0 with the wind chill. There were so many cars and trucks off the road or just froze up, you had to stand in line for your turn. I had to keep scraping frost off the inside of the windshield.

I'm sure the Wyoming and Dakota people will have a few "cold-n-windy" yarns to spin

 

hurricane isabell in virginia beach 2003. i had just had my daughter 3 weeks prior so it was scary for me to have to go thru it. luckily our house wasnt really damaged except for tree limbs and debris.

 

About a year ago,we had the strangest cloud activity directly above the house.While watching this from outside, Michelle & I thought for sure we were headed for Kansas.

 

tornadoes,blizzards,and the flood of 93 did a lot of damage in this area. hard to believe that was 12 years ago

 

Winter of '68, I was living in a remote area of Trinity County. (About 80 miles east of Redding, Ca.) We were on a trip for the Holidays, planning to return home for X-mas when a big storm hit, dumping huge (for us) amounts of snow in a very short time. We couldn't get home and had to stay with my grandparents in Redding for X-mas. Redding normally gets a dusting of snow every few years, if any, but this storm dumped about 2 feet on the town, causing roofs that wern't designed for any snow load to collapse. When we got home, the sledding was great, though! At one point during that winter, our power was out for nine days.

In the winter of '85, we had just moved to Mendocino county. Had a big winter storm, dumped copious amounts of rain on us with high winds. The rain was falling horizontally. One huge blast of wind took the roof off our barn and sent it sailing into the power lines, knocking out power to us and the nearby town of Boonville. We were without power for 2 days while they tried to fix it.

Never been in any hurricanes or tornadoes though, nothing fun like that...! -TD

 

Ok, so here it is... January 97, Huron area of South Dakota, a three day blizzard that made me think of the Little house on the Prarie stories... Snowdrifts 20-30 foot deep for miles. The visibility was so poor that when I left for work that morning I would go from ditch to ditch, I thought I would be going straight, and when the wind gust died down a shade, I would see that I was headed for the ditch. I finally made the mile to the paved road, decided to head back home, and got disoriented. Backed right into the ditch on a 4 way intersection. As I was sitting there stuck, the radio was asking for reports on what was going on outside... the storm wasn't supposed to hit for another 6 hours. Anyway, and hour later, a neighbor comes by and pulls me out, so i try to head home, but there was a big ol' snowdrift across the road, and I get high centered. A little later, another neighbor comes by, pulls me out and we talked a bit, he went home and I just went up to the neighbors and spent the next 3 nights there, which turned out to be a good thing, as it was an elderly couple, and they needed the help taking care of the livestock and cleaning up afterward. When it was all over, one of the other neighbors had a snowblower, (the same one that everyone told him was a waste of money), and had already cut a path through one of the large snowdrifts. I had my 75 F250 4x4 at the time, and the snowdrift was at least twice as high as the truck, and starting to fill in already. It slammed me side to side, bouncing the back of the truck off the snowdrift on both sides... then I went down my road the only way I could, since the snow plows had been coming from the south, but not plowing to the north, the road was buried under 20" of snow, the north was not covered as much since it had not had the plow piling up the snow on th3e side of the road. I hit the first snowdrift, looked to be about 3-4' deep, figured I would have to plow through it so i gunned it... Wrong answer! I was used to the Iowa snows that never got packed much, this snowdrift was packed so hard that it launched me into the air... Good thing the suspension had plenty of travel! Well, I learned from that and just drove over the snowdrifts the rest of the way home. I only sank into the snowdrifts about 1"! I just chipped the sharp side out of the drifts and drove the car over them too. It took a couple weeks before the south way was open again.... I had snowdrifts as tall as the trees after that, and it just kept coming, had snowdrifts in my yard in mid May with 70 degree temps.

 

High seas in the Atlantic in '75...I was on a carrier, but still rough.

-30 degrees during the winter of '72 in Colorado. Yup, I plugged my truck in, but it was so cold as soon as it started, because the tranny lube was nearly frozen, it rolled forward for a few feet....even though it was in neutral.

Couple of hurricanes when I was stationed in Florida.


120 degree heat near Death Valley

 

Here is what went on in our region On June 1st

A Few years ago on June 1st we had a freak snowstorm that dumped some 60+ cm (26") of snow & did Million $$$$$$ of damage.

Here are the pics...enjoy

http://www.clubfte.com/users/mil1ion/i000773_big.jpg

http://www.clubfte.com/users/mil1ion/i000772_big.jpg

http://www.clubfte.com/users/mil1ion/i000765_big.jpg

http://www.clubfte.com/users/mil1ion/i000768_big.jpg

http://www.clubfte.com/users/mil1ion/i000769_big.jpg

 

Did you take those, Dennis? Those pics are awsome! -TD

 

No,When the sky looks like this, I'm usually running for cover


I found one of the pics on this page though.

http://www.saskatoonscanner.com/storms/2004/

 

right now. it's about 37 C with the humidity and i've only got two frosty mugs. i'm trying to rotate them between beers but the freezer is having a hard tme keeping up.

 

Earthquakes, blizzards, tornados (3 going at one time, not too bad), and ice storms.

 

honey moon june 14 , 1980 we took a cruise to bermuda and hit a storm that caused them to keep every one inside and run out of sea sick meds'. a few bad storms while driving a big rig coast to coast where the snow was so deep they closed rt 80 and 70 in the mid west