What was your neatest or scariest experience with weather?

Question

Simply can't choose a favorite...too many good stories.
My personal favorite weather story is when I got caught in a 10X10 smoke shack made entirely of plexiglas (ceiling too!) in a freak hail storm in June in the Midwestern US with a friend who has since left this planet. We stood on the bench and looked up as the half inch hail stones pummeled down onto the transparent plexi just inches above our faces. The sound track was pretty impressive too.

Answer 1

I have 3:

1) My most fun moment was falling from FL350 (nominally, 35,000 ft), sideways in a C-141B at (or slightly over) Vdne to an 1100-ft MSL recovery (which was about 250 ft AGL) in just over 1 minute. I was part of the team repairing the plane while we were falling. We were flying on a waiver (airplane was broken, problem couldn't be duplicated on the ground).

Our average speed for the *descent* (not forward speed) was 335 mph! The flight engineer was stuck to the starboard inner wall of the cargo area; his feet were about 1 foot off the floor. I don't recall how many "g" we pulled on recovery (I couldn't lift my head, and it was hard to breathe), but WOW it was a total rush!

The copilot lost it completely during the fall, but the pilot had ice water in his veins. The FE was talking so fast it sounded like gibberish. I was embarassed for the frozen copilot; had it not been for the pilot's steel nerves, we would have punched a serious hole in the earth.

The "weather" part is that we were turning to avoid a thunderstorm when the malfunction occurred.

2) Though I've been through several tornados and hailstorms that were fairly intense, Hurricane Andrew had me airborne in my car ('89 SHO, which obviously wasn't designed to fly), and that was a little scary. It's amazing how fast the air can make your car go, and how quickly it can accelerate your car when it's airborne!

3) One particular tornado/hailstorm I rode out in a house trailer. The outer walls and roof buckled and wiggled like a flag flapping in the wind, and the inside walls vibrated and shook. The Lexan kitchen window broke. It was a lot like going through an earthquake or being near a bombing run -- but technically, neither an earthquake nor a bombing run is weather.

There was another incident that rates pretty high on my "uh oh" scale: I was running back to my house from the field when I was a teen (fleeing a sudden T-storm), and when I passed a small tree in the backyard, lightning struck the tree.

There was a flash (and logically, a very loud sound), it felt like I had been hit in the back by a speeding truck, and simultaneously like millions of needles had somehow shot from under my skin out my back.

I was about 5 feet from the tree when lightning hit it, and about 40 feet from my house's back door. Even though I was already running as fast as I thought I could, it took me only 2 steps to cover the remaining 40 feet (and no, I don't normally have anything close to that kind of stride).

Answer 2

Some of the neatest and scariest experiences I've had with weather all dealt with lightning.

I love to watch lightning and have seen some pretty spectacular displays. One of the best displays I've seen was at a lake watching the lightning cascade across the surface of the water and cause the water to glow.

One of the scariest was when walking home one day and it wasn't even raining yet though the clouds were thick and it was black as night even though it was only in the afternoon. I felt a static charge passing over me, and every hair was standing on end and I knew that there was going to be a lightning strike. Needless to say, I ran till the sensation passed.

Another incident involving lightning happened when I was inside the house, it was a different storm but again, in the afternoon... I was looking outside a large bay window and then a blinding FLASH, I saw lightning strike the main road (about 50 feet away) and heard a deafening clap of thunder... finally a shower of sparks as the lightning tried to ground itself all within seconds.

Later, after the storm passed, I went to look and the lightning strike had hit the road, melted a path through the asphalt for about 5 feet and then grounded itself on the earth nearby. Very impressive and heartstopping.

Answer 3

Years ago I was in a room with no windows down in the basement. There was a Thunder storm going on and lightning hit the well in front of the house. There was a stereo in the basement and the antenna was tied to one of the water pipes. The energy from the lightning traveled through the pipe and jumped to the antenna. from there it traveled through the stereo out to the speakers, and for about 10 seconds there was a blue ball of light directly above each speaker. Needless to say the stereo was shot after that, but it was a really cool thing to see happen. The forces of nature are amazing.

Answer 4

Being born and raised in South Bend IN I saw many bad storms and tornados. We moved to South Carolina and in 1989 we went through Hurricane Hugo. Even though we are 90 miles from the ocean it hit our city. I was in the closet with our son and my husband was in another closet. For 4 hours the storm was here. After the storm we drove around and was amazed at the destruction that this storm made. We were without water and electricity for 5 days. After that experience I have become more interested in the weather.

Answer 5

The neatest experience with weather is watching lightning storms from my front & back porch

My scariest experiences were getting caught in a hail storm while doing track officials work and almost getting struck by lightning on more than one occassion

Answer 6

While hiking, getting caught above the tree line (at about 11,000 ft) when a lightning and hail storm came in. Fortunately, or one might say miraculously given where we were, we found a spot where all three of us could crouch down and get in some cover, use the backpacks to cover the holes, etc. It was very exhilarating.

Answer 7

I was shooting an ILS approach at Austin, Texas in a thunderstorm and flew through an especially violent cell that threw the airplane into some rather unusual attitudes.

Being that close to the ground, not being able to see it and being disoriented was especially scary. Fortunately it lasted only a few seconds and the airplane emerged in level flight only a few feet below the glide path.

Answer 8

It was not in an airplane, but on the grounds.
Tunderstorm, electrics failed, total night, except the lights of the fireplace. Lighting struck the phone line. The phone jumped off the desk. The PC caught fire (modem!).
And a totally silent ball of light, 10cm in diameter, floated in the middle of the room, drifting gently towards the fireplace, where it "popped" without a noise and disappeared.
My two german shepperd were crying on my laps and it took me a while to restart thinking...
Hi Doug! I was sure you were a pilot too...

Answer 9

my scariest weather experience happened when i was 9 years old and was my parents were not home when a tornado warning was broadcasted over our favorite cartoons. i was watching my brother who was just 3 years old. when i heard the warning, i knew to take my brother into the basement and go under the "sturdy table" that we had used during previous tornado warnings. however, this time the tornado flattened our house. i held my brother tight underneath me as i heard the train-like noise of the tornado pass overhead. then, everything was silent and my brother and i were covered in rubble. neighbors helped us out quickly and my parents came back to what was left of our home but i'll never forget how scared i was as the tornado passed overhead.

this experience led to me becoming a meteorologist.

Answer 10

With a little over 4000 hours on my pilots license, I've had lots of both kinds. But one of the prettiest is seeing a 360° reflective rainbow from high altitudes.


Doug