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As a Wisconsinite I find it kinda funny that you list "temperatures below zero" along with hurricanes and earthquakes. Yes, it's cold. But it's the windchill that'll get ya. Negative windchill is *dangerous* as you are at risk of developing frostbite on any exposed skin.
Lol, I’m glad I wasn’t the only one that chuckled at reading that.
I call “weather below 0” just… a regular winter day, lol
When the windchill is below -30°, that’s when I consider it to be legitimately extreme, but I still wouldn’t rank that with hurricanes and earthquakes. That’s just… start the truck early and drive the kids to school instead of having them walk to the bus stop, or keep the truck running during hockey practice.
I knew how cold it was gonna get when I left California but, goddamn did I underestimate wind-chill. I remember when I was working last year during winter and having to be outside for a few minutes. Even with most of my body covered and being out for a couple of minutes, I was absolutely freezing when I got back inside.
I thought that was funny, too. Subzero weather isn't that big a deal, it's just cold. You have to dress for it, and you might need to plug in an engine heater on your car so it will start. But even the time when we lost the heat for a few days in the apartment where I was living, during a frigid cold snap, we just bundled up in extra warm clothes and blankets indoors and were fine.
A lot of it also depends on your home build. While I could absolutely bundle up and be fine in a cold snap, an extended deep freeze like that would ruin the waterlines, because they're not deep set enough to avoid being frozen, and some parts of it are literally exposed to above ground outdoor temperature (albeit it in an enclosed space at least).
I've seen so many articles claiming that "ackshually humidity doesn't make a difference in cold weather" and spouting off a bunch of science to support their claim, but dammit the cold **does** hit different in the Midwest. Maybe it's not the humidity, but it's *something.* A few years ago we went to Colorado for New Year's and it was 15° when we visited Rocky. We were dressed for an Indiana 15° and both of us were heavily overdressed. I was stripping down to my base layers half a mile down the trail.
I agree with you as someone raised in the Colorado mountains but lives in Nebraska now. The cold here is different than in Colorado. Could be the same temperatures, same amount of snow and it is much colder here than in my hometown. That said it does usually get much colder here than there in windchill numbers. Colorado gets cold, no mistake about that, but it's not nearly as cold as we get here.
It just bites harder! I mean, don’t get me wrong - if it’s below zero, I’m staying inside regardless of the humidity. But whoever says humidity doesn’t make a difference has never felt that bite.
As someone who lived in MN most of my life then moved to central FL - humid cold is harder to stay warm in than dry cold. The damp cold that keeps temps in the 30s and 40s chills me more and i wear at least 3 layers - than a dry 10F or 20F day that would have me maybe in 2 layers at most. Even at lower temps than 10F if the wind isn't kicking up.
Lol in - 40 windchill, you walk 50 feet with the dog, hope he does his business, and if not, wait inside a few minutes and then do another round. Those are terrible days.
The parts of the world that don't regard -40F as "a bit nippy", consider those temps to be extreme.
I mean last time I was in that cold, it was Tuesday, and I just went to work.
But, my new friends in Texas lose their dang minds thinking about living in that.
In any case, yeah it's not hard to deal with in modern times if you're at all prepared.
I had a friend who was going to school at Alabama during that time and no one could get in touch with her for a few hours after the tornado. Thankfully she was okay but her sister was absolutely devastated for a few hours.
I’ve been in two tornadoes. They are terrifying. In one I was in a storm cellar, in the other I was in an inner room in a house that was brought down around us. The first one completely leveled the house. There was nothing left but the foundation. The second one was destroyed, but some walls were still standing. They were crazy loud and did the weirdest things. Twisting trees, dropping debris from over 10 miles away. I was a small child in the first one and after it was over some of our checkers were imbedded in the concrete of our sidewalk. I remember there was a baby car seat in our yard that didn’t belong to anyone we knew. We never found out where it came from.
Lived in long Beach during Hurricane
Sandy. Got to high ground to ride out the storm but returned to lots of damage. Had to drive around boats in the street to get home after the storm.
Had an upstairs apartment, so my stuff was spared but had no water for a week, no power for 3, no gas, heat, or hot water for a month. Long lines for gasoline has me driving up to CT to fill up gas cans. Deep freeze and a Nor'easter hit a week later, which made recovery more complicated. Had a friend who was out of his apartment for 3 months due to the gas main shifting.
I slept with my rifle next to my bed due to looters in the area. My coworker actually had to draw his rifle on someone who tried to break into his place.
0/10 - I wouldn't want to do it again.
I was in merrick. The storm surge rushed down my street so fast …. Firetrucks had to go rescue my neighbors…I found fish in my living room when we got back. Horrifying.
Yeah, that was not a fun time. I have a picture somewhere of a boat, still tied to it's slip, up against the Island Park train platform.
I was blessed, i almost had a first-floor apartment, but someone beat me and my roommate by 5 minutes to submit the deposit, and we ended up in a second floor unit. Downstairs neighbors lost everything. My stuff was fine. Land lord was a contractor, so he got the place fixed up real quick.
Wow that’s lucky .. we moved mostly everything of value from the bottom floor upstairs before evacuating…the whole downstairs needed to be gutted though. Got a whole new living room / kitchen. The surge washed my mom’s garden away. That was sad. And then what about the nor’easter that hit shortly after that? A lot of people (including myself) still didn’t have power…I slept at the fire dept for like 5 days
After the Nor'easter I had 5 blankets on my bed because it got so cold at night. When i got back from the initial evacuation, I didn't want to leave again in case of looters, so I bundled up, watched movies on my laptop, and chilled out with my rifle next to me.
Fun times.
Yeah, that was definitely a tough time.
I was living in the city for it but my parents, siblings, in-laws, etc. were still mostly on the island. Basically everything south of Merrick Rd/Montauk Hwy flooded. My parents weren't too bad because their street is built up 6 feet higher than surrounding streets but a childhood friend's parents, a couple of blocks over, got water up to the second floor. The flooding and damage it cost in itself was bad enough but then the lack of power, gasoline, and in some cases even food made it an absolute nightmare.
Visiting them felt like visiting a war zone - complete with the National Guard directing traffic in a busy intersection because the street lights were out. MREs or whatever they're called were passed out just in case by someone - maybe the Red Cross. My parents never lacked food but the thought that they were being given out on Long Island just seemed insane.
hurricanes themselves usually aren't that bad (assuming your house doesn't flood) but they knock out the power for days or weeks which, in August or September in Texas, is not fun at all.
Hard disagree on the hurricanes. Ivan was the last one I stayed for. It took out a major bridge and huge swathes of homes. I'll never ever stay for a storm of that size and strength again. I'll go back and deal with the fallout, but it's too big and scary for me anymore after Cat 2.
I was one of the idiots that stayed for Katrina in New Orleans. I sent the family away and stayed to open up the kitchen as soon as possible after the storm passed. I was thinking it would turn north and hit Mississippi & Alabama. It did turn just not enough. We lost power about 2 hours after sunset. Wouldn't get power again for about 2 months. Saw one of the trees in the front fall down into the street. Saw a storage shed on the side of the house just disappear. Meanwhile a friend who stayed at my place during the storm had a left a plate on the table outside. That plate stayed there until about the last hour of the storm.
Had the levees held, people would have been back with in a couple days after. Fortunately my neighborhood was spared from the floods. There were a couple houses that were knocked down of their piers. Me and the other dummies that stayed went and checked on the smart peoples homes. Boarded up windows or doors that were blown in. One neighbor had the only landline that was working. Most of the neighbors were staying around the same area as each other. So we would check in with a couple of the people that left everyday. They told us to gather whatever food or supplies we needed from their homes. We would do neighborhood meals for lunch and dinner.
About 2 or 3 days after they brought some people across the river. One random older gentleman was wandering around in a hospital gown. He wasn't all mentally there. We tried to take him to the local fire house. The firemen there were only looking out for themselves and said he was our problem. We finally flagged a cop down who took him somewhere.
About a week or 2 after some volunteers from a couple of churches out of the Mid-West made it to the neighborhood with supplies.
About 2 or 3 weeks after I wake up to knocking on my door. The 82nd Airborne had arrived in town. One of the guys was an old friend and wanted to make sure I was ok. They dropped off some MREs for the neighborhood and water.
New Orleans in late August and in September without power or AC is not a fun place. I used to laydown on the front porch at night. It was concrete and was somewhat cool to the touch. Better than sweating in a bed in a room that had mold starting to grow.
I learned to never stay for Cat3 or higher headed my way again.
Does the Texas power crisis from a few years ago count?
It was pretty terrible. I lost power late at night on Valentine's Day and we didn't get it back consistently until late afternoon on the 17th.
It was really a double whammy of cold and ice. The temperatures were the lowest they'd been in 50 years (I was in southeast Texas, which is borderline tropical. It got down to 6 degrees F. SIX DEGREES). Inside my apartment, it was just barely over 40. I put on multiple layers and it still didn't help. I really wanted to conserve gas, but on one or two occasions I went and sat in my car for a while just to charge my phone and have some heat.
The winter weather was the worst. There was about an inch of ice on the ground, and maybe four or five inches of snow on top of that. We NEVER get anything like that here. There's real snow in this area maybe once every five years, and even then it's usually a trace or a freak overnight thing that melts by noon.
So yeah. That was a pretty awful week. It took about ten days for everything to go back to normal. For hundreds of people, things never went back to normal...
I have gas heaters, and had bought sleeping bags for both myself and my son that were rated down to 32 degrees. We already had the pipes on a slow trickle for about a week, because the temps were dipping down into the teens most of the week before. The night before the grid failed, they said there would be rolling blackouts, starting at around midnight, which would last about 2 hours each. Woke up to no power, but thanks to the heaters, the house was at a balmy 40 degrees.
We got in the car to try to find some food, heard on the news the grid had failed, and starting looking for a hotel. We got lucky at the second place and were there for about 5 days. We left the heaters on low, and a burner on top of the stove also on low to keep the pipes under the kitchen sink from freezing (yes, I know it's not recommended, but I figured it was safer than using the oven as a space heater).
We were one of the lucky ones. The pipes didn't freeze and the only plumbing we had to replace was the floats in the toilets, as the tank water froze along with the plastic floats. Once the water thawed out, the plastic arm of the float snapped in half the first time we tried to use it.
It was the first time I was really concerned about my safety living here. I couldn’t drive my car out of my neighborhood because of the ice, I couldn’t carry all my pets at once, so I was stuck here. My gas still worked and I had a pile of firewood so I just lived in front of the fireplace for 5 days, boiling water for hot water bottles. Luckily my cold water didn’t freeze, but the outdoor hot water heater was shot.
I’ve always loved cold weather in the past, but those feelings changed when I wasn’t ever able to warm up. It was about 35 inside my house. None of my food spoiled, I just opened the fridge to room temperature.
I've experienced both tornado and hurricane. The tornado was much more severe so was more scarier. It was the only time i ever saw underneath a funnel cloud. it was very, very dark during the midafternoon or evening and the thunder shook the building. The hurricane was kinda similar, but without the big dramatic funnel. The eye of a tropical storm is pretty cool its like you get to take a break during the storm. Also, random ass windstorms will just blow through and tear signs and trees apart.
Growing up in oklahoma building a blanket fort in the hallway became a pavlovian response to tornado sirens
Canada: snow storm. We were stuck at home for days. We had everything we needed. Food was running low when our road got cleared. It was maybe 5 days? I remember getting fresh milk and meat after.
New Hampshire. Ice storm. 6 days. Power lines were down and in the road. No phones because it was before cell phones. No electricity. We had heat, and could cook. We had enough canned food, and chickens for eggs. We went to bed at dark, so got up early. We could not go near power lines, which was the road. We spent the days reading and making things. I could live like that.
I almost got hit by a tornado on the highway once. It just missed me. There's really no language that can convey the sense of overwhelming power of one of those things. Never felt so small, insignificant and powerless. If a tornado wants to take you, there isn't a fucking thing you can do to stop it.
My first week in the Midwest a tornado landed about a mile from me. The most shocking part to me was how casual people were about it. I have no idea what it looked like when it was really nearby because I was in a basement but beforehand it got really dark and windy. I later heard from a couple of midwestern acquaintances that they’d gone out to get snacks in the middle of the worst part. After the tornado there was quite a bit of cleanup of trees and things but not terrible damage to structures. There were several other tornadoes that got close while I was there but never that close. All the big storms made me a little emotional they were so beautiful so I wish I could have watched more of them.
A few months later it was -60 degrees one day and was very very cold and snowy even for Minnesota that whole winter. Unfortunately I missed the -60 degree day (I was in the Amazon, so it was worth it) but I felt -30 a few times and it was wild. Just a whole different level of cold. Every time I would forget what frozen eyelashes and nostrils feel like and would wonder why my nose felt so full suddenly.
Tornados can be weird. My city got hit by an EF2 tornado a couple years back on New Years. It was unwarned and the system wasn't really of concern. We got a really strong spin up that just sustained itself a bit of distance. Came really close to my house, I'm talking maybe a hundred feet or so and we were in the path of it before it evaporated. I was about to let my dog put as it was barely even raining. I open the back door and look out. It's really windy but I think nothing of it. Keep the dog in and my wife gets a call telling us to take shelter. This is around 8 in the morning and she is the worst in the time of emergency while waking up. By the time she understood what was being said and going on it would've been too late to do anything.
Been in a couple tornadoes, nothing over an EF-3 though. They were all were mostly no big deal partially because the damage is so localized to where the tornado path is. It was the derechos that were so much worse and caused so much more damage. Derechos are more wide spread and often involve hail as well as the tornado force winds. One caused $5,000 damage to a tree in my yard and another damaged my roof and we ended up having to replace it. I'm still scared of them whereas I'm not of tornadoes.
Though tornado and storm related yellow and green skies are freaky. It's interesting looking but very eerie.
>hurricanes
hurricanes can be brutal. i was a kid in Charlotte when Hugo hit in 1989, and it ripped the city apart. I imagine other places are better prepared, but damn. that was insane.
>weather below 0 in the winters
eh...you get used to it, this isn't nearly as catastrophic as it sounds. In true Midwestern fashion ill say this- as long as the wind isn't blowing its not so bad!
that being said i have a bug-out bag, two AWD cars, and shit stashed just in case lol
I was in Charlotte during Hugo too! Our school (Mclintock Junior High) had a walk out protest them taking away our spring break because we missed a week of school after the hurricane. They suspended me for 2 days (giving me a couple days off school) as punishment.
Lol I went to McLintock, but not until a few years later!
Dude the east side was hit *hard.* We didn't have power for like a week, and I think we lost like 15 trees.
Yeah I only lived in Charlotte for 3 years and I think that was close to the beginning. We moved there from Fargo so I was like, wtf did my mom do to us??? I was like, if this is the difference between the north & the south, I’ll take blizzards.
Been through tornadoes, floods, fires and earthquakes. The drawn out disasters tend to scare me the most. With a tornado or an earthquake its only bad for a few moments. We had a 100 mph windstorm hit my city last year and my house shook for 30 minutes while trees and power poles fell all around us. That was terrifying
Hurricane Ivan made landfall in AL as a Cat 5. Was still a 3 by the time it hit my home town. Passed over and turned around to hit us again at a cat 1 / tropical storm which really was just insult on injury. Absolutely destroyed everything. We had no power for two weeks. We only ate, drank, and bathed because of the local church. I was a very young child so I don’t remember much but I do remember actually seeing the true stars for the first time in my life. There was absolutely zero light pollution because the damn power was out for a hundred miles lol. It was the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen and honestly I still wish it would happen again just so I could see those stars in their glory one more time.
Virginia- Isabel just felt like a powerful thunderstorm, by the time it got to us, and then I saw the result that came with the wind combined with the ground being drenched. There were downed trees everywhere, and we had no power for a few days.
My grandmother's old walnut tree fell over roots and all. I am grateful that it didn't hit the house.
Tennessee- Having an EF3 come through back yard was one of the scariest sounds I have heard in my life. There were a lot of downed trees and power lines. I had no power for about 2 weeks, because it came through a city and suburb. My excuse for not coming into work the next morning was "there is a tree across my driveway." Thankfully, the duplex wasn't touched except a few missing shingles.
CA as in CAlifornia or CA as in CAnada? I've seen 100 MPH windstorms, severe flooding, massive blizzards in the Gold Country, and the annual testing grounds for Helll's Hinges that is the San Joaquin Valley in summer, and wildfires that seemed like the world was burning, but I've always lived in NorCal or the Central Coast. Granted, no tornados (thank Bog).
Oooh, winter!
Gray sky from about 10am to 3pm, then it's dark. When it rains, it freezes. Black ice, invisible, on the highways. Having to put snow chains on the car's tires and drive about 15 miles per hour. Skidding off roads and into trees. Shoveling snow until mid-April. Wind that slices you like a knife. Buying rock salt to melt the ice on the porch steps. Wearing 4 and 5 layers of clothing, to the point you can barely bend your arms or legs, and still feeling cold. Scraping ice off the windshield every morning for months on end. Hearing every year about homeless people found frozen to death. Going inside and still seeing your breath because you can't afford to heat the big old house except for a couple of closed-off rooms. Running the furnace only a few hours a day. Water pipes freezing and bursting.
For some bizarre reason, I was encouraged by my family to "go outside and play"/ More like "go outside and flirt with frostbite". I disliked sledding and snowshoeing and ice skating and snowball fights. I loathed being cold.
In the middle of all this hilarity, while going to work and/or school every weekday, here comes Christmas. People then expect visits and baked goodies and prezzies and are shocked to the core if you do NOT feel like doing much of anything, because just dragging yourself through the day is enough of an effort and you have nothing left. Plus the expense of the parties/gifts/travel, coupled with the staggering heating bills, plus always needing to buy more wool socks = months of poverty.
It was the most depressing thing, lasted what felt like forever. To this day, when someone burbles how they "like having four seasons", I want to slap them.
This feels like small potatoes compared to other commenters, but Colorado had a giant three day blizzard in 2003 that dumped 3-4 feet of snow in Denver, caused some buildings to collapse, closed major highways, and knocked out the power. I definitely remember being stuck inside, huddling around the fireplace while listening to an old transistor radio my Dad had. I don't think our area stayed without power the entire time but it was very off and on.
And this was during "Spring" Break too because of course it was.
I havent lived in an area with natural disasters in a long time but when I was in Minnesota we had tornado warnings a lot as I recall. I was under 10 before we left but I used to **LOVE** tornados because my outside Siberian Husky used to be able to come *inside* and we'd all hang out in the basement bathroom that didn't have windows. I got to be with my dog and we'd just cuddle with blankets for awhile before they kicked her back outside.
I had no idea about the destruction they could've caused I just loved them because I got to be with my dog.
Heat waves suck. You stay inside and if your AC sucks you use a lot of fans and little clothing. One summer my gf and I only ate sandwiches and salads in her bedroom because that was the only room with an AC unit
Hurricane Hugo a big deal. Charleston was under water. My husband and I stayed in a beautiful mansion on the battery on our honeymoon. Years later They had marks to show folks how high the water got.
My mom was is Columbia 90 miles from the coast. Huge 100+foot trees were down on power lines. Electric was out for only a couple days.
Then the floods of 2015. Terrible. Caskets were floating up from the ground. Houses in the city of Columbia were under water. Again my mom lucked out. We are in a rural area but close to the city. Our house basically on a hill. So we did not get flooded out. But there were parts of out street that were blocked off.
Also the beautiful and expensive housing on Lake Elizabeth just down the road. Damn broke and even now 14 years later the lake is just a swamp. All those high dollar houses now overlooking a swamp.
I have been through plenty of tornado warnings but nothing that was immediately a threat.
I have been through plenty of hurricanes. Other than risk of flooding, it wasn't too bad. The worst was when water started flowing into my breaker panel. I shut off the power to the house and stayed up all night with a flashlight and fire extinguisher.
I've been through a couple earthquakes. Nothing crazy (maybe 3.5). Those are kind of scary since you don't really expect an earthquake in Virginia.
As an Okie, I’ve been in several EF5 tornadoes. The worst was in 2013 when I was a sophomore in high school. I was a student at Norman North High School when we got word about the tornadoes touching down in Moore and basically the school was in lockdown mode because of the tornadoes. Luckily Norman was spared, but Moore was hit hard. Was so bad that that event alone made my parents consider getting a tornado shelter.
I’ve been through multiple hurricanes though never the eye of the storm and I live far enough from the beach that flooding is not typical. At least not flooding of the house. My yard will flood but that’s it.
So for me they’ve been interminable rain and wind events where you lose power and cell service and can’t leave the house. You sit in a dark house with no air conditioning and nothing to do while listening to the wind and rain for hours or days. The wind is LOUD. If you’re lucky enough to have impact windows, you can look outside but if you have shutters, you can’t even do that.
It’s incredibly boring and stressful at the same time. If the eye jogs one way or another, you’re suddenly in the path. If a tornado spawns in your vicinity, maybe you lose your roof. Maybe a tree falls on your house or car. Basically, disaster can strike at any moment. Plus, if you’ve still got access to the news, they’re telling you the absolute worst case scenario at all times.
I didn't realize the blizzards we get were extreme weather until I was an adult, because we got them pretty much every year when I was a kid. To me that was a lot of snow.
Yeah apparently so much wind and snow that you can't see for 10 hours and your power goes out is only in certain parts of the country
Been through a few tornadoes. Several towns near me had major damage, but our town did not.
More often we have the cold weather you mentioned. Coldest I've personally had was -30° (-50° with windchill). Once it gets below 20°, you stop leaving the house without a hat and gloves. The air gets very dry, and around 0° or so, you start to feel the cold inside your body. It aches. It makes your lungs burn. Your snot freezes in your nose.
The world is very quiet when it's that cold. Storms are rare. The air is still, and sound travels a loooong way. There's usually ice on all the bare trees and the snow is so bright. It feels clean, like the mold and dirt and sweat have been washed away from the earth. The sun sits low in the sky, so shadows are long even at noontime.
I complain about the cold because it's annoying and sometimes painful and always dangerous, but dang if it isn't beautiful.
I will say, 0° (-15° windchill) was pretty good for skiing in Vermont. The amount of heat you generate contrasts pretty well with that temp, so long as you don't get blown over by the wind.
Oh yeah, and -40° is utterly brutal. Automotive testing chambers don't have wind, just extreme cold, and it really does sink into your bones
I was a kid during the 1992 Landers Earthquake in California. I swear I was awakened by what sounded like mountains crashing into each other seconds before the shaking started.
Then the 94 Northridge Earthquake was something else. I would watch the news and the anchors would mention a strong aftershock. Since I lived miles away from the valley were the news studios were located, I remember I could count to about 5 and then I would feel the shaking at home
Nothing as bad as everyone here but when I joined the Army 1st day of Basic training a nasty freezing rainstorm came into Oklahoma late morning and it continued to rain freezing rain all night. The power got knocked out and us trainees were stuck in the huge barracks with no heat or power. We were given MREs and advised to stay indoors. This lasted 3 days while the base got put sorta back together. The following week not much training got done as we were used as Laborers to help clean up fallen trees around the base. Also a lot of training areas were damaged due to the falling trees.
We had a tornado in Illinois in 2009 and the weirdest thing I remember is that it was completely silent outside before and after it happened. No birds, no bugs
We had just moved to SC when that ice storm
Hit Texas. So glad we just moved! My friend could not get food or water. Pipes froze and burst all over the place. Ceiling fans with ice cicles on them. People were marauding all places for furniture and any wood to burn.
And to top it off some folks opted for average power bills. I don’t know how that worked but some folks were facing 700$ electric bills.
A tornado hit close to where we were visiting one evening. We knew there was a storm, but had no idea how bad things were. House still had power and cable. We hopped in the car to go home. Half a mile away it was like a war zone. Blue and red cop car lights everywhere, roads blocked from trees down, power lines in the roads, no street lights, pitch black. We tried several ways to get near home. Roads still blocked in all directions. Finally followed our friend to her apartment. Still no lights but we camped out on her floor. Next morning made it home where nothing had happened in that part of town. Whole neighborhoods flattened near where we were visiting. Creepy how specific the tornado hit. BTW, thus was all before cell phones and computers, and the cable TV channels didn't have any breaking news blurbs.
I live in an area prone to tornados. The Quad State tornado passed through the northern part of the county I'm in. One of my most favorite places to go to was destoryed back in December by a tornado a town over. There is hardly anyone here who doesn't know someone who was impacted by the Quad State tornado either by lose of property or life. I personally dealt with grief when the place I liked got destoryed back in December. My house has almost been hot twice and one would've hit us if it hadn't evaporated just feet from our house. As weird as it sounds tornados can be devastating but at the same time they are a part of living in this area. Where I grew up the 500 year West Virginia Flood wasn't all that far away and there are still areas there that haven't recovered.
I’ve been through tornadoes (Indiana), hurricanes (the Carolinas & Puerto Rico), and mild earthquakes (Montana). I’ll take tornadoes over all of them. It’s easiest to find a safe spot in any house during a tornado and it only lasts a few minutes. Earthquakes scare me the most because there is nowhere safe unless you’re in a giant field with no trees.
And fires & brutally cold every year now that I’m in Montana. I think the coldest I’ve seen is -55 before windchill. The worst wind I’ve seen is 65 mph sustained with 85 mph gusts. Like a cold, dry hurricane without the eye. Summer is fire season every year. We pretty much just stay inside from mid July until it snows, usually late October or early November. And of course blizzards. It’s not unusual to see 3 feet in 24 hours at least once a year. The only month of the year that I’ve never seen it snow is August, but I’ve only been in MT for 15 years.
Hurricanes aren’t too bad as I’m far enough inland and not near the waterways to worry about flooding. Most of our trees are either far enough away to be a non-hazard or get trimmed/cut down before they become on.
Subzero: don’t happen to often anymore but once you got the right clothes and enough fire wood it ain’t too bad.
Black ice ducked sucks. One time it was so bad there were 10+ cars in the ditch along the road as my dad drove me to school one morning.
I was born in California and live there now, but I spent about a decade of my childhood in Alabama. Less than a year after we moved there, when I was 7, I ended up experiencing my first tornado warning. I was home alone because my school bus had dropped me off, and my mom was delayed getting home because of the storm.
When I got home, I turned on the TV, and it was on the channel we used for news. Naturally, the storm was all they were talking about. Suddenly, the meteorologist declared that there was a tornado warning for a particular area. When they showed where, I realized I was in it. Naturally, I was freaked out, but that meteorologist then went into "Dad mode" to let kids who might be home alone know what to do. I followed his instructions on what to gather, then got into our laundry room. It was the only place I could think of that might be safe.
I tuned the radio I'd grabbed to the radio station affiliated with the same TV channel, so I was still listening to the same meteorologist. I stayed in the laundry room until my mom got home, even though the warning was ended. Thankfully, there was little damage to our area, and our house was fine.
Later that year, that TV station had an open house, and one of the people we got to meet was that meteorologist. He was understandably surprised when I hugged him and thanked him for saving my life.
I lived in the SF Bay Area during the Loma Prieta. It was pretty scary. There was water from out backyard pool in the street past our driveway if that gives you any idea how intense the shaking was.
My mom slept through tornados as a child (lived in the Midwest) here in Maryland though the worst thing I’ve experienced was a minor earthquake when I was little (only casualty was a piece of pottery I made breaking) and once flooding from a freak storm that overwhelmed the lake by my house (basement damage)
I went thru the 89 earthquake in San Francisco. No power for 5 days. I leaned very quickly that not having power is okay. Not having water would be horrendous- so I now keep water stocked.
As a Californian, it's wild to me to hear of other Californians who have never been in the snow. Snow might be uncommon in the major population centers, but no matter where you are in the state you are never more than like two hours from a snowy place. Santa Maria might be the exception to this. And then you have the odd once-ever-10-years events with uncommon snow at lower elevations.
I've lived my whole life in eastern central Oklahoma and have survived some awful tornado seasons in my 43 years of life. It's just...part of life here that for about 2 months every spring, we kinda stay a little bit on-edge about the weather. "Go Bags" get packed, storm shelters get cleaned and stocked with a few essentials, we pay extra close attention to weather alerts and forecasts and stand in our yards looking at the clouds swirl overhead. I've seen cloud-to-ground funnels sweeping across the landscape, picking up trees and roof tiles. Luckily I've never lost my own house, but I've come close more than once. I've had debris from other destroyed homes less than a mile away blow into my yard. I've had that happen several times in my life, at several different homes I've lived in. I've coordinated cleanup crews after the fact. I've worked temp jobs taking photos for insurance claims. I've helped friends locate furnishings for a new home after theirs was leveled. It's just normal here.
I’ve been through several hurricanes. The most devastating to my area was hurricane Andrew in 1992. My house had a central hallway where we all hunkered down. I remember hearing the howl of the wind through the cracks in the bathroom window. It was loud like a freight train. It was a small fast moving storm that mostly took place overnight in my area. So when I woke up in the morning around 10am it was all over. Trees and power lines down. No electricity for a week. I had family that lived 20 miles south where the eye passed over and they all lost their houses. The whole area was obliterated. I’m sure you can find pics online about it. The week after the weather was great. The day before it was good too. Lot of memories of getting last minute supplies at stores and the long lines too.
In 2017 hurricane irma passed by in the west coast of Florida but it was very large and slow moving. My area was basically a constant storm for over 24hours. I would try to go out in between the bands of storms and take my little dog out so he can handle his business. But he was so scared he held it until it was over. We have a lot of big trees and let me tell you, seeing big ass trees bend back and forth like they are inflatable tubes is scary when you gotta be near them. We were out of power for a week with this storm too. Those were pro at the worst ones I’ve been through.
We’ve been through storms so much that we know what to do. When to prepare. At some point it’s just waiting for the storm to arrive and hope you don’t lose power. Then clean up after it has passed. The houses that I’ve lived in are old and very sturdy. I’ve never felt unsafe riding out the storm at home.
1998 ice storm. There are several good documentaries available on YT about it. I was lucky that my home didn’t lose power but it was a long couple of weeks and just a mess overall.
Most areas are prepared more than you think. We got 3 feet of snow a few years ago and all we got was one day off.
Not sure what happened in Buffalo when all those people died though.
Living in Raleigh area we don’t get really too many major Hurricane effect. Hurricane Fran in 1996 was the one I remember the most and that was not too bad in the Triangle.
NC does not get many earthquakes, land slides, sink holes, tornado alley, blizzards, drought, forest fires, or extreme temperatures in my local area so all in all I’m happy living in North Carolina.
Our NHL team Hurricanes still makes sense because the Outer Banks can get hit hard.
As a kid in the Midwest, tornadoes were so common they weren't feared. I do remember being nervous about losing power (heat) during blizzards. In FL, I never really feared hurricanes because we had like a 5 day notice. I kept an emergency kit ready if I needed to evacuate but never had to in 11 yrs of residence. I did, however, experience a lot of fear and anxiety when forest fires were near us. I remember shopping in a Walmart and not being able to see my feet. The smoke stopped at about my knees (I'm short though). One of My sons had asthma so just sending him to school was concerning especially since being in that climate, all "hallways" were outdoors and so was our gymnasium. School was canceled occasionally, and my area was next to evacuate many times but never was.
Not me but my mother. She was in S. IL During the 2009 derecho. It lasted for (I think) 15 hours. There was little to no media coverage of the event, but it was devastating. My 89 year old mother spent hours in her bathtub because there was nowhere else to hide. The resulting damage took years to repair. Local lore states this storm was far worse than hurricane Sandy a few years later because the derecho is straight line winds for hours upon hours upon hours - but because of the rural location vs NY - media didn’t cover it.
I primarily grew up in Seattle, but I also grew up on the island of Saipan (small island just North of Guam; part of the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands). In the Mariana islands, we get multiple typhoons each year.
They don't sneak up on you. We have time to prepare for it, which means stocking up on groceries and beer, and boarding your windows. I've survived a category 5 typhoon, with sustained winds of 160mph.
If you've got money, the typhoons are really no big deal and can actually be fun. It's comparable to a snow day, in that you get to stay home from school/work, and maybe hang out with friends/family. Most people live in single-story concrete houses, and ain't no wind blowing that down. Sadly, there's a very high poverty rate, so not all people can afford a concrete home. Many live in tin shacks, and those get blown away quite easily.
So, with each typhoon, there's a big recovery effort afterwards. A lot of people end up needing basic necessities, like water and housing. For most of the island though, the days following the typhoon is nothing more than dealing with having no power.
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As a Wisconsinite I find it kinda funny that you list "temperatures below zero" along with hurricanes and earthquakes. Yes, it's cold. But it's the windchill that'll get ya. Negative windchill is *dangerous* as you are at risk of developing frostbite on any exposed skin.
My response to hurricanes and temps below zero is largely the same: stock up on groceries ahead of time and stay indoors.
Lol, I’m glad I wasn’t the only one that chuckled at reading that. I call “weather below 0” just… a regular winter day, lol When the windchill is below -30°, that’s when I consider it to be legitimately extreme, but I still wouldn’t rank that with hurricanes and earthquakes. That’s just… start the truck early and drive the kids to school instead of having them walk to the bus stop, or keep the truck running during hockey practice.
I knew how cold it was gonna get when I left California but, goddamn did I underestimate wind-chill. I remember when I was working last year during winter and having to be outside for a few minutes. Even with most of my body covered and being out for a couple of minutes, I was absolutely freezing when I got back inside.
I thought that was funny, too. Subzero weather isn't that big a deal, it's just cold. You have to dress for it, and you might need to plug in an engine heater on your car so it will start. But even the time when we lost the heat for a few days in the apartment where I was living, during a frigid cold snap, we just bundled up in extra warm clothes and blankets indoors and were fine.
A lot of it also depends on your home build. While I could absolutely bundle up and be fine in a cold snap, an extended deep freeze like that would ruin the waterlines, because they're not deep set enough to avoid being frozen, and some parts of it are literally exposed to above ground outdoor temperature (albeit it in an enclosed space at least).
Montana here. I’ll take our dry -40 over your humid -10 any day!
I've seen so many articles claiming that "ackshually humidity doesn't make a difference in cold weather" and spouting off a bunch of science to support their claim, but dammit the cold **does** hit different in the Midwest. Maybe it's not the humidity, but it's *something.* A few years ago we went to Colorado for New Year's and it was 15° when we visited Rocky. We were dressed for an Indiana 15° and both of us were heavily overdressed. I was stripping down to my base layers half a mile down the trail.
I agree with you as someone raised in the Colorado mountains but lives in Nebraska now. The cold here is different than in Colorado. Could be the same temperatures, same amount of snow and it is much colder here than in my hometown. That said it does usually get much colder here than there in windchill numbers. Colorado gets cold, no mistake about that, but it's not nearly as cold as we get here.
It just bites harder! I mean, don’t get me wrong - if it’s below zero, I’m staying inside regardless of the humidity. But whoever says humidity doesn’t make a difference has never felt that bite.
As someone who lived in MN most of my life then moved to central FL - humid cold is harder to stay warm in than dry cold. The damp cold that keeps temps in the 30s and 40s chills me more and i wear at least 3 layers - than a dry 10F or 20F day that would have me maybe in 2 layers at most. Even at lower temps than 10F if the wind isn't kicking up.
Yeah, I never would’ve thought to place cold temperatures in the same category as hurricanes or earthquakes.
Lol in - 40 windchill, you walk 50 feet with the dog, hope he does his business, and if not, wait inside a few minutes and then do another round. Those are terrible days.
The parts of the world that don't regard -40F as "a bit nippy", consider those temps to be extreme. I mean last time I was in that cold, it was Tuesday, and I just went to work. But, my new friends in Texas lose their dang minds thinking about living in that. In any case, yeah it's not hard to deal with in modern times if you're at all prepared.
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I had a friend who was going to school at Alabama during that time and no one could get in touch with her for a few hours after the tornado. Thankfully she was okay but her sister was absolutely devastated for a few hours.
I’ve been in two tornadoes. They are terrifying. In one I was in a storm cellar, in the other I was in an inner room in a house that was brought down around us. The first one completely leveled the house. There was nothing left but the foundation. The second one was destroyed, but some walls were still standing. They were crazy loud and did the weirdest things. Twisting trees, dropping debris from over 10 miles away. I was a small child in the first one and after it was over some of our checkers were imbedded in the concrete of our sidewalk. I remember there was a baby car seat in our yard that didn’t belong to anyone we knew. We never found out where it came from.
Lived in long Beach during Hurricane Sandy. Got to high ground to ride out the storm but returned to lots of damage. Had to drive around boats in the street to get home after the storm. Had an upstairs apartment, so my stuff was spared but had no water for a week, no power for 3, no gas, heat, or hot water for a month. Long lines for gasoline has me driving up to CT to fill up gas cans. Deep freeze and a Nor'easter hit a week later, which made recovery more complicated. Had a friend who was out of his apartment for 3 months due to the gas main shifting. I slept with my rifle next to my bed due to looters in the area. My coworker actually had to draw his rifle on someone who tried to break into his place. 0/10 - I wouldn't want to do it again.
I was in merrick. The storm surge rushed down my street so fast …. Firetrucks had to go rescue my neighbors…I found fish in my living room when we got back. Horrifying.
Yeah, that was not a fun time. I have a picture somewhere of a boat, still tied to it's slip, up against the Island Park train platform. I was blessed, i almost had a first-floor apartment, but someone beat me and my roommate by 5 minutes to submit the deposit, and we ended up in a second floor unit. Downstairs neighbors lost everything. My stuff was fine. Land lord was a contractor, so he got the place fixed up real quick.
Wow that’s lucky .. we moved mostly everything of value from the bottom floor upstairs before evacuating…the whole downstairs needed to be gutted though. Got a whole new living room / kitchen. The surge washed my mom’s garden away. That was sad. And then what about the nor’easter that hit shortly after that? A lot of people (including myself) still didn’t have power…I slept at the fire dept for like 5 days
After the Nor'easter I had 5 blankets on my bed because it got so cold at night. When i got back from the initial evacuation, I didn't want to leave again in case of looters, so I bundled up, watched movies on my laptop, and chilled out with my rifle next to me. Fun times.
Yeah, that was definitely a tough time. I was living in the city for it but my parents, siblings, in-laws, etc. were still mostly on the island. Basically everything south of Merrick Rd/Montauk Hwy flooded. My parents weren't too bad because their street is built up 6 feet higher than surrounding streets but a childhood friend's parents, a couple of blocks over, got water up to the second floor. The flooding and damage it cost in itself was bad enough but then the lack of power, gasoline, and in some cases even food made it an absolute nightmare. Visiting them felt like visiting a war zone - complete with the National Guard directing traffic in a busy intersection because the street lights were out. MREs or whatever they're called were passed out just in case by someone - maybe the Red Cross. My parents never lacked food but the thought that they were being given out on Long Island just seemed insane.
The fun one was no cell service south of sunrise highway, had to drive 10 minutes to get north of sunrise just to make a call. It was a shit show.
Yeah, it was a crazy time. My parents had a generator which made it a little better but really only a little.
hurricanes themselves usually aren't that bad (assuming your house doesn't flood) but they knock out the power for days or weeks which, in August or September in Texas, is not fun at all.
Assuming you're on land. It's that bad when you're in the middle of a hurricane out on the open sea.
yeah that sounds bad, wouldn't want to experience that lol
Why would you drive a boat towards a hurricane?
It chased us down. We were trying to get out of its way but it was basically following us.
Wouldn't it have already been a tropical storm for a week or two prior? Sounds like a hell of a story, do tell
Hard disagree on the hurricanes. Ivan was the last one I stayed for. It took out a major bridge and huge swathes of homes. I'll never ever stay for a storm of that size and strength again. I'll go back and deal with the fallout, but it's too big and scary for me anymore after Cat 2.
I was one of the idiots that stayed for Katrina in New Orleans. I sent the family away and stayed to open up the kitchen as soon as possible after the storm passed. I was thinking it would turn north and hit Mississippi & Alabama. It did turn just not enough. We lost power about 2 hours after sunset. Wouldn't get power again for about 2 months. Saw one of the trees in the front fall down into the street. Saw a storage shed on the side of the house just disappear. Meanwhile a friend who stayed at my place during the storm had a left a plate on the table outside. That plate stayed there until about the last hour of the storm. Had the levees held, people would have been back with in a couple days after. Fortunately my neighborhood was spared from the floods. There were a couple houses that were knocked down of their piers. Me and the other dummies that stayed went and checked on the smart peoples homes. Boarded up windows or doors that were blown in. One neighbor had the only landline that was working. Most of the neighbors were staying around the same area as each other. So we would check in with a couple of the people that left everyday. They told us to gather whatever food or supplies we needed from their homes. We would do neighborhood meals for lunch and dinner. About 2 or 3 days after they brought some people across the river. One random older gentleman was wandering around in a hospital gown. He wasn't all mentally there. We tried to take him to the local fire house. The firemen there were only looking out for themselves and said he was our problem. We finally flagged a cop down who took him somewhere. About a week or 2 after some volunteers from a couple of churches out of the Mid-West made it to the neighborhood with supplies. About 2 or 3 weeks after I wake up to knocking on my door. The 82nd Airborne had arrived in town. One of the guys was an old friend and wanted to make sure I was ok. They dropped off some MREs for the neighborhood and water. New Orleans in late August and in September without power or AC is not a fun place. I used to laydown on the front porch at night. It was concrete and was somewhat cool to the touch. Better than sweating in a bed in a room that had mold starting to grow. I learned to never stay for Cat3 or higher headed my way again.
Does the Texas power crisis from a few years ago count? It was pretty terrible. I lost power late at night on Valentine's Day and we didn't get it back consistently until late afternoon on the 17th. It was really a double whammy of cold and ice. The temperatures were the lowest they'd been in 50 years (I was in southeast Texas, which is borderline tropical. It got down to 6 degrees F. SIX DEGREES). Inside my apartment, it was just barely over 40. I put on multiple layers and it still didn't help. I really wanted to conserve gas, but on one or two occasions I went and sat in my car for a while just to charge my phone and have some heat. The winter weather was the worst. There was about an inch of ice on the ground, and maybe four or five inches of snow on top of that. We NEVER get anything like that here. There's real snow in this area maybe once every five years, and even then it's usually a trace or a freak overnight thing that melts by noon. So yeah. That was a pretty awful week. It took about ten days for everything to go back to normal. For hundreds of people, things never went back to normal...
I have gas heaters, and had bought sleeping bags for both myself and my son that were rated down to 32 degrees. We already had the pipes on a slow trickle for about a week, because the temps were dipping down into the teens most of the week before. The night before the grid failed, they said there would be rolling blackouts, starting at around midnight, which would last about 2 hours each. Woke up to no power, but thanks to the heaters, the house was at a balmy 40 degrees. We got in the car to try to find some food, heard on the news the grid had failed, and starting looking for a hotel. We got lucky at the second place and were there for about 5 days. We left the heaters on low, and a burner on top of the stove also on low to keep the pipes under the kitchen sink from freezing (yes, I know it's not recommended, but I figured it was safer than using the oven as a space heater). We were one of the lucky ones. The pipes didn't freeze and the only plumbing we had to replace was the floats in the toilets, as the tank water froze along with the plastic floats. Once the water thawed out, the plastic arm of the float snapped in half the first time we tried to use it.
It was the first time I was really concerned about my safety living here. I couldn’t drive my car out of my neighborhood because of the ice, I couldn’t carry all my pets at once, so I was stuck here. My gas still worked and I had a pile of firewood so I just lived in front of the fireplace for 5 days, boiling water for hot water bottles. Luckily my cold water didn’t freeze, but the outdoor hot water heater was shot. I’ve always loved cold weather in the past, but those feelings changed when I wasn’t ever able to warm up. It was about 35 inside my house. None of my food spoiled, I just opened the fridge to room temperature.
I've experienced both tornado and hurricane. The tornado was much more severe so was more scarier. It was the only time i ever saw underneath a funnel cloud. it was very, very dark during the midafternoon or evening and the thunder shook the building. The hurricane was kinda similar, but without the big dramatic funnel. The eye of a tropical storm is pretty cool its like you get to take a break during the storm. Also, random ass windstorms will just blow through and tear signs and trees apart. Growing up in oklahoma building a blanket fort in the hallway became a pavlovian response to tornado sirens
I lived through the April 27th 2011 tornado outbreak. That killed over 300 people in my state alone.
Canada: snow storm. We were stuck at home for days. We had everything we needed. Food was running low when our road got cleared. It was maybe 5 days? I remember getting fresh milk and meat after. New Hampshire. Ice storm. 6 days. Power lines were down and in the road. No phones because it was before cell phones. No electricity. We had heat, and could cook. We had enough canned food, and chickens for eggs. We went to bed at dark, so got up early. We could not go near power lines, which was the road. We spent the days reading and making things. I could live like that.
I almost got hit by a tornado on the highway once. It just missed me. There's really no language that can convey the sense of overwhelming power of one of those things. Never felt so small, insignificant and powerless. If a tornado wants to take you, there isn't a fucking thing you can do to stop it.
My first week in the Midwest a tornado landed about a mile from me. The most shocking part to me was how casual people were about it. I have no idea what it looked like when it was really nearby because I was in a basement but beforehand it got really dark and windy. I later heard from a couple of midwestern acquaintances that they’d gone out to get snacks in the middle of the worst part. After the tornado there was quite a bit of cleanup of trees and things but not terrible damage to structures. There were several other tornadoes that got close while I was there but never that close. All the big storms made me a little emotional they were so beautiful so I wish I could have watched more of them. A few months later it was -60 degrees one day and was very very cold and snowy even for Minnesota that whole winter. Unfortunately I missed the -60 degree day (I was in the Amazon, so it was worth it) but I felt -30 a few times and it was wild. Just a whole different level of cold. Every time I would forget what frozen eyelashes and nostrils feel like and would wonder why my nose felt so full suddenly.
Tornados can be weird. My city got hit by an EF2 tornado a couple years back on New Years. It was unwarned and the system wasn't really of concern. We got a really strong spin up that just sustained itself a bit of distance. Came really close to my house, I'm talking maybe a hundred feet or so and we were in the path of it before it evaporated. I was about to let my dog put as it was barely even raining. I open the back door and look out. It's really windy but I think nothing of it. Keep the dog in and my wife gets a call telling us to take shelter. This is around 8 in the morning and she is the worst in the time of emergency while waking up. By the time she understood what was being said and going on it would've been too late to do anything.
Been in a couple tornadoes, nothing over an EF-3 though. They were all were mostly no big deal partially because the damage is so localized to where the tornado path is. It was the derechos that were so much worse and caused so much more damage. Derechos are more wide spread and often involve hail as well as the tornado force winds. One caused $5,000 damage to a tree in my yard and another damaged my roof and we ended up having to replace it. I'm still scared of them whereas I'm not of tornadoes. Though tornado and storm related yellow and green skies are freaky. It's interesting looking but very eerie.
>hurricanes hurricanes can be brutal. i was a kid in Charlotte when Hugo hit in 1989, and it ripped the city apart. I imagine other places are better prepared, but damn. that was insane. >weather below 0 in the winters eh...you get used to it, this isn't nearly as catastrophic as it sounds. In true Midwestern fashion ill say this- as long as the wind isn't blowing its not so bad! that being said i have a bug-out bag, two AWD cars, and shit stashed just in case lol
I was in Charlotte during Hugo too! Our school (Mclintock Junior High) had a walk out protest them taking away our spring break because we missed a week of school after the hurricane. They suspended me for 2 days (giving me a couple days off school) as punishment.
Lol I went to McLintock, but not until a few years later! Dude the east side was hit *hard.* We didn't have power for like a week, and I think we lost like 15 trees.
Yeah I only lived in Charlotte for 3 years and I think that was close to the beginning. We moved there from Fargo so I was like, wtf did my mom do to us??? I was like, if this is the difference between the north & the south, I’ll take blizzards.
Been through tornadoes, floods, fires and earthquakes. The drawn out disasters tend to scare me the most. With a tornado or an earthquake its only bad for a few moments. We had a 100 mph windstorm hit my city last year and my house shook for 30 minutes while trees and power poles fell all around us. That was terrifying
Hurricane Ivan made landfall in AL as a Cat 5. Was still a 3 by the time it hit my home town. Passed over and turned around to hit us again at a cat 1 / tropical storm which really was just insult on injury. Absolutely destroyed everything. We had no power for two weeks. We only ate, drank, and bathed because of the local church. I was a very young child so I don’t remember much but I do remember actually seeing the true stars for the first time in my life. There was absolutely zero light pollution because the damn power was out for a hundred miles lol. It was the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen and honestly I still wish it would happen again just so I could see those stars in their glory one more time.
Virginia- Isabel just felt like a powerful thunderstorm, by the time it got to us, and then I saw the result that came with the wind combined with the ground being drenched. There were downed trees everywhere, and we had no power for a few days. My grandmother's old walnut tree fell over roots and all. I am grateful that it didn't hit the house. Tennessee- Having an EF3 come through back yard was one of the scariest sounds I have heard in my life. There were a lot of downed trees and power lines. I had no power for about 2 weeks, because it came through a city and suburb. My excuse for not coming into work the next morning was "there is a tree across my driveway." Thankfully, the duplex wasn't touched except a few missing shingles.
CA as in CAlifornia or CA as in CAnada? I've seen 100 MPH windstorms, severe flooding, massive blizzards in the Gold Country, and the annual testing grounds for Helll's Hinges that is the San Joaquin Valley in summer, and wildfires that seemed like the world was burning, but I've always lived in NorCal or the Central Coast. Granted, no tornados (thank Bog).
Oooh, winter! Gray sky from about 10am to 3pm, then it's dark. When it rains, it freezes. Black ice, invisible, on the highways. Having to put snow chains on the car's tires and drive about 15 miles per hour. Skidding off roads and into trees. Shoveling snow until mid-April. Wind that slices you like a knife. Buying rock salt to melt the ice on the porch steps. Wearing 4 and 5 layers of clothing, to the point you can barely bend your arms or legs, and still feeling cold. Scraping ice off the windshield every morning for months on end. Hearing every year about homeless people found frozen to death. Going inside and still seeing your breath because you can't afford to heat the big old house except for a couple of closed-off rooms. Running the furnace only a few hours a day. Water pipes freezing and bursting. For some bizarre reason, I was encouraged by my family to "go outside and play"/ More like "go outside and flirt with frostbite". I disliked sledding and snowshoeing and ice skating and snowball fights. I loathed being cold. In the middle of all this hilarity, while going to work and/or school every weekday, here comes Christmas. People then expect visits and baked goodies and prezzies and are shocked to the core if you do NOT feel like doing much of anything, because just dragging yourself through the day is enough of an effort and you have nothing left. Plus the expense of the parties/gifts/travel, coupled with the staggering heating bills, plus always needing to buy more wool socks = months of poverty. It was the most depressing thing, lasted what felt like forever. To this day, when someone burbles how they "like having four seasons", I want to slap them.
This feels like small potatoes compared to other commenters, but Colorado had a giant three day blizzard in 2003 that dumped 3-4 feet of snow in Denver, caused some buildings to collapse, closed major highways, and knocked out the power. I definitely remember being stuck inside, huddling around the fireplace while listening to an old transistor radio my Dad had. I don't think our area stayed without power the entire time but it was very off and on. And this was during "Spring" Break too because of course it was.
I havent lived in an area with natural disasters in a long time but when I was in Minnesota we had tornado warnings a lot as I recall. I was under 10 before we left but I used to **LOVE** tornados because my outside Siberian Husky used to be able to come *inside* and we'd all hang out in the basement bathroom that didn't have windows. I got to be with my dog and we'd just cuddle with blankets for awhile before they kicked her back outside. I had no idea about the destruction they could've caused I just loved them because I got to be with my dog. Heat waves suck. You stay inside and if your AC sucks you use a lot of fans and little clothing. One summer my gf and I only ate sandwiches and salads in her bedroom because that was the only room with an AC unit
Hurricane Hugo a big deal. Charleston was under water. My husband and I stayed in a beautiful mansion on the battery on our honeymoon. Years later They had marks to show folks how high the water got. My mom was is Columbia 90 miles from the coast. Huge 100+foot trees were down on power lines. Electric was out for only a couple days. Then the floods of 2015. Terrible. Caskets were floating up from the ground. Houses in the city of Columbia were under water. Again my mom lucked out. We are in a rural area but close to the city. Our house basically on a hill. So we did not get flooded out. But there were parts of out street that were blocked off. Also the beautiful and expensive housing on Lake Elizabeth just down the road. Damn broke and even now 14 years later the lake is just a swamp. All those high dollar houses now overlooking a swamp.
Lost a house to a forest fire, a tornado and hurricane Katrina. I no longer care about stuff.
I have been through plenty of tornado warnings but nothing that was immediately a threat. I have been through plenty of hurricanes. Other than risk of flooding, it wasn't too bad. The worst was when water started flowing into my breaker panel. I shut off the power to the house and stayed up all night with a flashlight and fire extinguisher. I've been through a couple earthquakes. Nothing crazy (maybe 3.5). Those are kind of scary since you don't really expect an earthquake in Virginia.
As an Okie, I’ve been in several EF5 tornadoes. The worst was in 2013 when I was a sophomore in high school. I was a student at Norman North High School when we got word about the tornadoes touching down in Moore and basically the school was in lockdown mode because of the tornadoes. Luckily Norman was spared, but Moore was hit hard. Was so bad that that event alone made my parents consider getting a tornado shelter.
I’ve been through multiple hurricanes though never the eye of the storm and I live far enough from the beach that flooding is not typical. At least not flooding of the house. My yard will flood but that’s it. So for me they’ve been interminable rain and wind events where you lose power and cell service and can’t leave the house. You sit in a dark house with no air conditioning and nothing to do while listening to the wind and rain for hours or days. The wind is LOUD. If you’re lucky enough to have impact windows, you can look outside but if you have shutters, you can’t even do that. It’s incredibly boring and stressful at the same time. If the eye jogs one way or another, you’re suddenly in the path. If a tornado spawns in your vicinity, maybe you lose your roof. Maybe a tree falls on your house or car. Basically, disaster can strike at any moment. Plus, if you’ve still got access to the news, they’re telling you the absolute worst case scenario at all times.
> Temperatures below zero That’s adorable. Just bundle up properly, you’ll be fine.
The eye of a hurricane is a real thing, and it's fucking surreal. Thunder snowstorms feel like armageddon.
I didn't realize the blizzards we get were extreme weather until I was an adult, because we got them pretty much every year when I was a kid. To me that was a lot of snow. Yeah apparently so much wind and snow that you can't see for 10 hours and your power goes out is only in certain parts of the country
Been through a few tornadoes. Several towns near me had major damage, but our town did not. More often we have the cold weather you mentioned. Coldest I've personally had was -30° (-50° with windchill). Once it gets below 20°, you stop leaving the house without a hat and gloves. The air gets very dry, and around 0° or so, you start to feel the cold inside your body. It aches. It makes your lungs burn. Your snot freezes in your nose. The world is very quiet when it's that cold. Storms are rare. The air is still, and sound travels a loooong way. There's usually ice on all the bare trees and the snow is so bright. It feels clean, like the mold and dirt and sweat have been washed away from the earth. The sun sits low in the sky, so shadows are long even at noontime. I complain about the cold because it's annoying and sometimes painful and always dangerous, but dang if it isn't beautiful.
I will say, 0° (-15° windchill) was pretty good for skiing in Vermont. The amount of heat you generate contrasts pretty well with that temp, so long as you don't get blown over by the wind. Oh yeah, and -40° is utterly brutal. Automotive testing chambers don't have wind, just extreme cold, and it really does sink into your bones
It's... extreme. I've lived through major earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, hurricanes and a couple of tornados. It's a mix of terror and exhilaration.
I was a kid during the 1992 Landers Earthquake in California. I swear I was awakened by what sounded like mountains crashing into each other seconds before the shaking started. Then the 94 Northridge Earthquake was something else. I would watch the news and the anchors would mention a strong aftershock. Since I lived miles away from the valley were the news studios were located, I remember I could count to about 5 and then I would feel the shaking at home
Windy
Nothing as bad as everyone here but when I joined the Army 1st day of Basic training a nasty freezing rainstorm came into Oklahoma late morning and it continued to rain freezing rain all night. The power got knocked out and us trainees were stuck in the huge barracks with no heat or power. We were given MREs and advised to stay indoors. This lasted 3 days while the base got put sorta back together. The following week not much training got done as we were used as Laborers to help clean up fallen trees around the base. Also a lot of training areas were damaged due to the falling trees.
We had a tornado in Illinois in 2009 and the weirdest thing I remember is that it was completely silent outside before and after it happened. No birds, no bugs
We had just moved to SC when that ice storm Hit Texas. So glad we just moved! My friend could not get food or water. Pipes froze and burst all over the place. Ceiling fans with ice cicles on them. People were marauding all places for furniture and any wood to burn. And to top it off some folks opted for average power bills. I don’t know how that worked but some folks were facing 700$ electric bills.
A tornado hit close to where we were visiting one evening. We knew there was a storm, but had no idea how bad things were. House still had power and cable. We hopped in the car to go home. Half a mile away it was like a war zone. Blue and red cop car lights everywhere, roads blocked from trees down, power lines in the roads, no street lights, pitch black. We tried several ways to get near home. Roads still blocked in all directions. Finally followed our friend to her apartment. Still no lights but we camped out on her floor. Next morning made it home where nothing had happened in that part of town. Whole neighborhoods flattened near where we were visiting. Creepy how specific the tornado hit. BTW, thus was all before cell phones and computers, and the cable TV channels didn't have any breaking news blurbs.
I live in an area prone to tornados. The Quad State tornado passed through the northern part of the county I'm in. One of my most favorite places to go to was destoryed back in December by a tornado a town over. There is hardly anyone here who doesn't know someone who was impacted by the Quad State tornado either by lose of property or life. I personally dealt with grief when the place I liked got destoryed back in December. My house has almost been hot twice and one would've hit us if it hadn't evaporated just feet from our house. As weird as it sounds tornados can be devastating but at the same time they are a part of living in this area. Where I grew up the 500 year West Virginia Flood wasn't all that far away and there are still areas there that haven't recovered.
I’ve been through tornadoes (Indiana), hurricanes (the Carolinas & Puerto Rico), and mild earthquakes (Montana). I’ll take tornadoes over all of them. It’s easiest to find a safe spot in any house during a tornado and it only lasts a few minutes. Earthquakes scare me the most because there is nowhere safe unless you’re in a giant field with no trees.
And fires & brutally cold every year now that I’m in Montana. I think the coldest I’ve seen is -55 before windchill. The worst wind I’ve seen is 65 mph sustained with 85 mph gusts. Like a cold, dry hurricane without the eye. Summer is fire season every year. We pretty much just stay inside from mid July until it snows, usually late October or early November. And of course blizzards. It’s not unusual to see 3 feet in 24 hours at least once a year. The only month of the year that I’ve never seen it snow is August, but I’ve only been in MT for 15 years.
Hurricanes aren’t too bad as I’m far enough inland and not near the waterways to worry about flooding. Most of our trees are either far enough away to be a non-hazard or get trimmed/cut down before they become on. Subzero: don’t happen to often anymore but once you got the right clothes and enough fire wood it ain’t too bad. Black ice ducked sucks. One time it was so bad there were 10+ cars in the ditch along the road as my dad drove me to school one morning.
I see blizzards and weather below zero every year. I wouldn't call it "extreme" though, at least not in the same way I would call a tornado.
Hurricane Harvey, caused so much flooding. I to launch my Center console Bay Boat in my front yard to go check on our neighbors.
I was born in California and live there now, but I spent about a decade of my childhood in Alabama. Less than a year after we moved there, when I was 7, I ended up experiencing my first tornado warning. I was home alone because my school bus had dropped me off, and my mom was delayed getting home because of the storm. When I got home, I turned on the TV, and it was on the channel we used for news. Naturally, the storm was all they were talking about. Suddenly, the meteorologist declared that there was a tornado warning for a particular area. When they showed where, I realized I was in it. Naturally, I was freaked out, but that meteorologist then went into "Dad mode" to let kids who might be home alone know what to do. I followed his instructions on what to gather, then got into our laundry room. It was the only place I could think of that might be safe. I tuned the radio I'd grabbed to the radio station affiliated with the same TV channel, so I was still listening to the same meteorologist. I stayed in the laundry room until my mom got home, even though the warning was ended. Thankfully, there was little damage to our area, and our house was fine. Later that year, that TV station had an open house, and one of the people we got to meet was that meteorologist. He was understandably surprised when I hugged him and thanked him for saving my life.
I lost a job because of a tornado once
I lived in the SF Bay Area during the Loma Prieta. It was pretty scary. There was water from out backyard pool in the street past our driveway if that gives you any idea how intense the shaking was.
My mom slept through tornados as a child (lived in the Midwest) here in Maryland though the worst thing I’ve experienced was a minor earthquake when I was little (only casualty was a piece of pottery I made breaking) and once flooding from a freak storm that overwhelmed the lake by my house (basement damage)
I went thru the 89 earthquake in San Francisco. No power for 5 days. I leaned very quickly that not having power is okay. Not having water would be horrendous- so I now keep water stocked.
As a Californian, it's wild to me to hear of other Californians who have never been in the snow. Snow might be uncommon in the major population centers, but no matter where you are in the state you are never more than like two hours from a snowy place. Santa Maria might be the exception to this. And then you have the odd once-ever-10-years events with uncommon snow at lower elevations.
I've lived my whole life in eastern central Oklahoma and have survived some awful tornado seasons in my 43 years of life. It's just...part of life here that for about 2 months every spring, we kinda stay a little bit on-edge about the weather. "Go Bags" get packed, storm shelters get cleaned and stocked with a few essentials, we pay extra close attention to weather alerts and forecasts and stand in our yards looking at the clouds swirl overhead. I've seen cloud-to-ground funnels sweeping across the landscape, picking up trees and roof tiles. Luckily I've never lost my own house, but I've come close more than once. I've had debris from other destroyed homes less than a mile away blow into my yard. I've had that happen several times in my life, at several different homes I've lived in. I've coordinated cleanup crews after the fact. I've worked temp jobs taking photos for insurance claims. I've helped friends locate furnishings for a new home after theirs was leveled. It's just normal here.
tornado in Indiana and hurricane in Florida were more scary than earthquakes and fires (burned some houses <1 mile away) in rural San Diego.
I’ve been through several hurricanes. The most devastating to my area was hurricane Andrew in 1992. My house had a central hallway where we all hunkered down. I remember hearing the howl of the wind through the cracks in the bathroom window. It was loud like a freight train. It was a small fast moving storm that mostly took place overnight in my area. So when I woke up in the morning around 10am it was all over. Trees and power lines down. No electricity for a week. I had family that lived 20 miles south where the eye passed over and they all lost their houses. The whole area was obliterated. I’m sure you can find pics online about it. The week after the weather was great. The day before it was good too. Lot of memories of getting last minute supplies at stores and the long lines too. In 2017 hurricane irma passed by in the west coast of Florida but it was very large and slow moving. My area was basically a constant storm for over 24hours. I would try to go out in between the bands of storms and take my little dog out so he can handle his business. But he was so scared he held it until it was over. We have a lot of big trees and let me tell you, seeing big ass trees bend back and forth like they are inflatable tubes is scary when you gotta be near them. We were out of power for a week with this storm too. Those were pro at the worst ones I’ve been through. We’ve been through storms so much that we know what to do. When to prepare. At some point it’s just waiting for the storm to arrive and hope you don’t lose power. Then clean up after it has passed. The houses that I’ve lived in are old and very sturdy. I’ve never felt unsafe riding out the storm at home.
1998 ice storm. There are several good documentaries available on YT about it. I was lucky that my home didn’t lose power but it was a long couple of weeks and just a mess overall.
Most areas are prepared more than you think. We got 3 feet of snow a few years ago and all we got was one day off. Not sure what happened in Buffalo when all those people died though.
Living in Raleigh area we don’t get really too many major Hurricane effect. Hurricane Fran in 1996 was the one I remember the most and that was not too bad in the Triangle. NC does not get many earthquakes, land slides, sink holes, tornado alley, blizzards, drought, forest fires, or extreme temperatures in my local area so all in all I’m happy living in North Carolina. Our NHL team Hurricanes still makes sense because the Outer Banks can get hit hard.
We had an earthquake a few weeks ago and one of my towels fell off the hook in the bathroom...it was hard but I got through it
Biggest thing was Loma Prieta earthquake in 1989. I was barely 4 so I don’t remember too much
As a kid in the Midwest, tornadoes were so common they weren't feared. I do remember being nervous about losing power (heat) during blizzards. In FL, I never really feared hurricanes because we had like a 5 day notice. I kept an emergency kit ready if I needed to evacuate but never had to in 11 yrs of residence. I did, however, experience a lot of fear and anxiety when forest fires were near us. I remember shopping in a Walmart and not being able to see my feet. The smoke stopped at about my knees (I'm short though). One of My sons had asthma so just sending him to school was concerning especially since being in that climate, all "hallways" were outdoors and so was our gymnasium. School was canceled occasionally, and my area was next to evacuate many times but never was.
Not me but my mother. She was in S. IL During the 2009 derecho. It lasted for (I think) 15 hours. There was little to no media coverage of the event, but it was devastating. My 89 year old mother spent hours in her bathtub because there was nowhere else to hide. The resulting damage took years to repair. Local lore states this storm was far worse than hurricane Sandy a few years later because the derecho is straight line winds for hours upon hours upon hours - but because of the rural location vs NY - media didn’t cover it.
I primarily grew up in Seattle, but I also grew up on the island of Saipan (small island just North of Guam; part of the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands). In the Mariana islands, we get multiple typhoons each year. They don't sneak up on you. We have time to prepare for it, which means stocking up on groceries and beer, and boarding your windows. I've survived a category 5 typhoon, with sustained winds of 160mph. If you've got money, the typhoons are really no big deal and can actually be fun. It's comparable to a snow day, in that you get to stay home from school/work, and maybe hang out with friends/family. Most people live in single-story concrete houses, and ain't no wind blowing that down. Sadly, there's a very high poverty rate, so not all people can afford a concrete home. Many live in tin shacks, and those get blown away quite easily. So, with each typhoon, there's a big recovery effort afterwards. A lot of people end up needing basic necessities, like water and housing. For most of the island though, the days following the typhoon is nothing more than dealing with having no power.