What is the worst Mother nature event you saw

[eilene]

I was thinking about this last night. We had a thunder and lighting storm that lasted 4 hours. It was terrible. It rained 2 inches and hour. I was thinking I wonder if anyone has witnessed a tornado or lighting strike real close.

[Jesse]

On the day of my sister's high school graduation, while we were getting ready to go a storm brewed up. Lightning and thunder all around. Then there was a simutanious flash and deafening crack of thunder. It shook the whole house (Stone Farmhouse, that is!). Where did it hit? My Dad was standing at the door to our house looking out at the farm. Our main door is on the end of the house and our house is in line with three long buildings that used to be chicken houses. My dad said he saw the lightning bolt hit OUT BEYOND THE BUILDINGs! In other words, it was pretty damn far away. I can't imagine what a direct hit would be like.

Was that the worst Mother Nature event I've witnessed? I don't think so. It was the scariest, but not the worst. Worst was the Winter of 1994. First we had about 6-8 inches of snow. Then it warmed up a bit and we got a huge rainstorm that melted most of the snow, then, with what seemed like a snap of the fingers, it got super cold and EVERYTHING FROZE! And froze SOLID! This was early January, I Think, and for a month we never even got close to above 32 degrees to melt it all away. Everywhere people gave up trying to chip away the ice and just started putting down sand and/or cinders on sidewalks, roads and parking lots.

[sandi]

The earthquake a few years ago was pretty nasty. Lots of damage and it was a very scarey event! I was at work at the time and walls and floors were rippling. Lasted for several minutes. Pretty Mind boggling

The worst, though, was probably when Mount St. Helens blew! Now that was scarey. It was a bright and sunny day in Washington, then everything turned dark black within an instant. There was ash falling in the air, just like rain. The roads and yards were covered with it.................I thought the end was here.

[JaminJim]

I remember a few earth quake's growing up.
There was a tornado last year here, I saw the aftermath.

[Pete]

I've been through 4 or 5 tornadoes. I was kind of outside for one of them. I had just graduated from high school and some friends and I went to a water park and the tornado sirens went off. They announced that their was no time to leave the park find shelfter immediatley. We found shelter in a building packed with people and no doors. A friend and I were standing pretty much in the door. We could see very large branches flying by and the rain going up. Later we saw trees that had been fallen but not blown or broken down but twisted off.

[Trexx]

Sacramento flooded in 1994.

No homes in my neighborhood got water inside but it was up to within inches of many front doors and garages including mine. I was land locked and couldn't get to work. Many other areas all around with big expensive homes went under though.
Ever see a manhole cover ride the top of a column of gushing water about foot and half to two feet high? That was going on all around the county, as the storm drains were overwhelmed. It's the weirdest sound to hear that water with the clanging lids as the rose and oscillated in place...

-trexx

[Jesse]

Come to think of it, we've had a couple tornados in my area in my lifetime, but I've never seen one or even knew about one in progress. Always found out the next day that there HAD BEEN one in the area.


Also, when I was about 2, lightning struck the electrical box that fed our trailer (yeah, my family lived in a trailer for about 6-8 months). It blew out all the appliances and started a fire. But I don't remember any of it, I just remember my parents talking about it years later, so I don't think that really counts.

[Pete]

I have one that I just rememberd that's not 100% mother nature but was non the less a terrible event.

I was living with a friend who bought a house and was giving me cheap rent. One night there was a bad rain storm. I went to the basement to grab a smoke and it was filled with water. I noticed that there was water shooting up about 2 or 3 feet in the center of the basement. I yelled for my friend who came down to investigate the problem. As he was wading through the knee deep water I noticed something floating. I said "hey look isn't that poop? and there's some over there!" it was sewage. Another freind came over and he said if ithe poop geyser didn't smell so bad it would almost be pretty.

[FunkyCanuck]

I'm very lucky where I live. No tornados <spelling> or flooding. We get the odd thunderstorm and lots of snow. But blizzards are something we shrug our shoulders at since ten feet of snow goes with living up here.

[Atreyu]

Was sitting in my living room last year on July 5th when the lightning and thunder started like I had never seen before. I got up to get a better look out the kitchen window and all I saw was black. For some reason I decided to lean over and look up and to my horror saw the top of the funnel of a tornado. Now here I am with 2 kids in the house one who was at that time just 3 years old and the other was turning 9 the following week. Coming originally from NYC I had never seen anything this awesome before and trust me I freaked. I yelled to my son(the9 year old) who was busy playing video games that a tornado was coming straight at us. He looked at me like yeah Dad is messing with me again until all the debris within this thing started hitting the house. He jumped up with a look of shock on his face as I yelled at him to get in the bathroom and dive in the tub and hold on. Meanwhile I grabbed my little daughter and was heading for the bathroom, when this tornado started passing right down the side street next to my house. I dove on my daughter and covered her the best I could as I watched the pressure from this sucker bow my living room window inwards. By Gods good graces it never broke. This thing proceeded to take the roof off the motel next door to me and the one across the street. It would have taken the roof off of my place if not for the fact that there were 5 layers of shingles on the roof. The sound was like Satan himself riding a freight train down the street. I never want to go through something like that with my kids ever again.

[Scott]

Atreyu brother, I hear you. As a lifelong resident of Missouri , tornados and bad thunderstorms are a fact of life--they never bothered me too much. Until I had children. Now they scare the crap out of me...not for my sake, but for theirs.

Last year I stood outside and watched a tornado forming overhead...at least until the golf-ball size hail started pelting down. That tornado ended up taking out a town called Stockton about 40 miles east of here. Several people lost their lives.

About ten years ago, we had what was called a "Microburst" here. It's kinda' hard to explain...but it's like the sky opens up and blasts wind straight down which goes out in all directions--it's a fairly rare occurance. We had winds in excess of 140 mph. Much of the town looked like a war zone.

When I was about 14, lightning hit my parents house and blew a hole in the ceiling of my room. It was about three in the morning. Where the tip of the lightning came in was about 6 feet from where I was sleeping.

Has anyone seen or even heard of "ball lightning"? When I was 9 or 10, my Mom and I saw a ball of lightning go down our street late one night during a storm. It actually moved slowly and bounced up and down as it went. I always thought it looked like somebody jogging down the road with a bright Coleman lantern. One of the strangest things I've ever seen...I'll never forget it.

[Trexx]

Atreyu- Dang, man! You gave me the chills with that account.


Scott:

I haven't seen ball lighting except on TV where a lab recreated an example.

But... In the old neighborhood were I grew up, our neighbors had a very tall redwood tree in their fron yard. When I went to vistit my folks after a lightning storm, it was topped from the middle and there were branches and wood all over the place. The neighbors house had a shattered front window and frame, the entire raingutter was laying all around on the ground and twisted like a giant serpent. Definitely a lighting strike. My pop saw it (smoker-outside-that-loves-storms), said that a huge bolt struck the tree exploding it instantly. Then a large fire ball rolled off the next largest branch and slammed into the house causing it to shudder, knocking certain parts off and disentigrating others... It didn't catch afire thank goodness, but it looked like a howitzer round came out of the front window and struck the eve of the house then the tree, because things were blown outward and debris was all over the faughkeen place!

-trexx

[Trexx]

I've seen three fatal airplane crashes.


1. Reno National Air Races, 1997. The gagle of T-6 and SNJ aircraft were forming up to begin the race. They always start off the course and dive into the circuit when the judge declares all OK.
Some poor dudes plane lost power right at that moment and the dude behind him collided with his wing as he overtook him. The dude that was struck lost control and spun into a nearby street from about 900 feet. The other plane made it OK.

2. Spring, 2000. This is bizarre: I was at the shooting range were my dad works. (outdoor range) I hear a tremendous rumble. Behind me I could feel it. I thought, "a train". Wait, there's no tracks around here! There were puddles of rainwater reflecting navigation lights.
It was dusk the sun was just barely below the horizon.
I look behind me and a huge sillouette is hurtling by. I follow it with my eyes. You could hear turbofan jet engines throttling and adjusting. Then KA-BLAM! Massive boom! By now I'm running towards the impact, a wall of fire that was beyond my periferral (sp?) vision rose up at that instant. It formed the biggest fireball I've ever seen. Total mushroom, rising up and turning the darkness into orange daylight, eerily illuminating the whole underside of the overcast for a few moments. So I'm hauling ass while looking for passangers that might be laying around. The fire ball dissapated, but everything was on fire. I was heading for it to see what I could do. Next to the shooting range there's a auto dismantler yard. The entire yard is surrounded by a cinderblock wall topped with electrified concertine razor wire. Even if I could breach that, the heat was intolerable. I could only see the fin of a large aircraft for a second or two and then it was completely ingulfed too.
Secondary explosions started. Gas tanks on the wrecks I guessed. Stuff was being blown high into the sky and you could hear the wiz of high speed chunks on unknown trajectories. It was surreal. It wasn't my day to go apparently. It was a Douglas DC-8, a very large four engined jet. It missed us by 50 or 60 yards. It was a courier service craft with a crew of three. They're gone. What happened is speculation. The theory is that a catastrophic load shift caused center of gravity to be altered and control lost. You could hear the engines adjusting before impact. I think the pilot, after a desperate u-turn to get back to land, could see that he wasn't going to make it and hammered it into the ground on purpose. Their heading was straight for a very large condominium complex and the freeway. The shooting range and the autowreckers were the only dark spot within site. He cartwheeled it in a the last moment instead of trying to clear the condos. It was a heroic action I believe. Let me tell you that it is a very weird thing to be the first on the scene of something like that.



Photo taken the next morning, it's still smoldering.
The red x is where I was when the doomed plane went by.
It did just nick the autowreckers building on eve of the roof.



3. Reno National Air Races, 2002. The sport class has a new competitor with the "Glassair" brand of aircraft. They're of composite fiberglass construction. Not a lot of history with the airframe. They are magnifent looking and state of the art. During a race, right after straightening out from a turn around a pylon and going parallel with the grandstands one of the planes in a group lost his stabilizer (wing that makes the tail). He was going about 290 miles an hour at about 30 feet above the ground. He went straight into the sagebrushed covered dessert with a sickly thud, like when you kick a pile of sand real hard. There was no fire, just a lot of dust and very small pieces of airplane. It was reduced to confetti. RIP, bro.


-trexx

[eilene]

Wow I can't believe some of these. I live in Nj and really do not get that bad of weather.

[justmusic]

Well, in August 2002 we had that terrible flood over here! It rained heavily for couple of days so that the dams broke and lot of towns and villages got affected by the following wave! The small rivers lead to the larger river Elbe that raised above 10 meters (normally it has around 2 meters in august) and half of my city (Dresden) got flooded, some districts got even evacuated. That all lasted for a week, until the river finally stopped rising! No telephone or television. You couldn't cross the river and though my family is living at the other side I was in sorrow, I couldn't get in touch with them!

What I really liked at these days was the kindness among people! Almost everybody that wasn't affected was out in the city helping others to get the water out of the houses or they filled sandbags or built dams. Even lot of tourists have been among those people, nobody asked stupid questions, everybody was busy helping others, they didn't even know!

[Ericoholic]

This past October, Southern California was infested by horrible wild fires and I was a bit too close to them for comfort... actually WAY too close.

We were woken up at approximately 2am with the fires damn near in our back yard. I packed up the dogs and the cat and got them out. As I tried running back for more, the fire spread and I was stuck in the middle of it. I though for sure I was dead, and to be honest, I'm STILL not sure how exactly I did make it out.

The next morning though when we returned, we realized just how hard we were hit: A good portion of the property was burned down, 3 vehicles burned, and worse of all, my fiances mother did not make it out as we thought she had and was killed in the fires.

[sandi]

Ericoholic said:

This past October, Southern California was infested by horrible wild fires and I was a bit too close to them for comfort... actually WAY too close.

We were woken up at approximately 2am with the fires damn near in our back yard. I packed up the dogs and the cat and got them out. As I tried running back for more, the fire spread and I was stuck in the middle of it. I though for sure I was dead, and to be honest, I'm STILL not sure how exactly I did make it out.

The next morning though when we returned, we realized just how hard we were hit: A good portion of the property was burned down, 3 vehicles burned, and worse of all, my fiances mother did not make it out as we thought she had and was killed in the fires.

I remember reading about those Fires................Sorry to hear of your loss Horrible thing to have happen.

[eilene]

Eric I am gald you made it out and I am very sorry to hear about your future mother in law.