Severe Weather

[Caitlin]

Okay, so it's a broad topic, but highly fascinating!
I used to be deathly afraid of severe weather until one night when I was 10 my family was out and I was home alone. There was a huge storm...hail, straightline winds, rain, and tons of lightning. I was scared out of my mind, and to make matters worse the power went out, and I could see the sky turning greener and greener (from my hiding spot in the basement). I survived the night and from then on have been keen on storms.

Tonight, I was out with my friend and the tornado sirens began to go off. Instead of staying inside like sensible people we threw on our jackets, and ran out to his car. We headed into the storm. Battled the rain, hail and wind...we were looking for the tornado. Then my friend gets a call from his dad, "Where are you? Don't you hear the sirens?" He responded, "Yeah dad! Caite and I are IN the storm...we're looking for the tornado! Just remember I love you!" It was a wild night. Wind was coming strong from both sides of the street...holding the car upright. If it weren't from the wind on both sides I daresay I wouldn't be posting this! We'd probably be in a ditch somewhere.
We drove for a half an hour into the storm looking for the tornado, but didn't see it. I forgot my camera in the hotel so I wasn't able to get pictures. Maybe next time!

Has anyone else had a wild experience with severe weather?

<3 Caite

[Joe]

Hi Caite

If I lived in the midwest, I'd probably would be doing the same thing...storm chasing.

I hope you and your friend were careful! I've seen car windshields destroyed by hailstones. Did a tornado touch down in your area? If so, I hope it was away from any populated areas.

I've always been keen on the weather. I record the daily max and min. temps. as well as rain and snowfall. I have a handheld weather instrument that measures windspeed, dew point, etc. The National Weather Service radars are great during severe weather.

I haven't had a wild experience with severe weather; just the occasional trek to the basement if a tornado warning is issued.

Thunderstorms are frequent in PA during the summer; the higher elevations and surrounding Pocono Mountains add instability to the atmosphere. Most of the damage occurs from straight-line winds, although a handful of weak tornadoes do form in late Spring.

Then in the autumn comes the hurricanes. Most of what's left of them track over PA. Katrina's remnants still packed a strong punch.

The biggest impact of a single storm event in my area had to be Hurricane Agnes back in '72. The cities of Scranton and Wilkes-Barre had catastrophic flooding.

[postscript]

Hi Joe.
I know you mentioned it under 'Gathering of Fans' but it is obvious here, too... your 1,000th post. Congratulations from a midget not yet a fifth of that output!

Peter

[roger]

Caite, you worry me!

The worst weather conditions in this area occurred in October 1987. It is officially known as "The Great Storm" but is often referred to (wrongly) as the hurricane.

It began in the early hours of the morning, perhaps about 2 o'clock. The worst of it was over by about 7 but warnings were still being broadcast on radio and television that it was still dangerous to go out. So I went out!

I live in a cul-de-sac so the only way out of here is by turning left or right onto the main road. Both ways were totally blocked by two massive fir trees that had fallen during the night. Debris was still blowing around furiously, some of it quite sizable. Not far away, the main road was flooded by a nearby river that had burst its banks.

I lost half my roof and many large shrubs were ripped out of the ground never to be seen again. I also gained a shrub but never discovered it's rightful owner!

West Sussex (where I live) was one of nine counties in south-east England to be so affected. Roads were cleared and property repaired remarkably quickly but signs of damage remained for many months.

It seemed dreadful at the time but was nowhere near as devastating as the many occurrences elsewhere in the world before or since.

About five miles to the east of here is a magnificent landscaped garden called Leonardslee. Although privately owned, it is open to the public. Set in a huge valley with a series of lakes at the bottom, it is famous for its stunning display of rhododendrons and collection of rare trees. It was wrecked. The following week, the local paper stated that volunteers would be welcome to help clear up the mess. I went along on five consecutive Saturdays. Huge trees had been uprooted and rolled down the steep sides of the valley causing further damage in the process. The wood was rare and valuable but how do you retrieve it from the bottom of the valley? Hiring a team of circus elephants was seriously considered but rejected due to the risk of even more damage in dragging the massive trucks (of the trees, not the elephants!) up the valley. About fifty of us were there with chain saws and thirty massive bonfires.

Everyone was terribly upset to see the damage so soon after it happened but the owner immediately announced that this was the best thing that could have happened to Leonardslee. We thought he had gone mad. He explained that there was a lot of "dead wood" (no literally dead) which should have been cleared years ago bu that he had never got around to doing it. Now we had no choice. I went back there during the following spring. He was right. It looked better than ever.

Roger

[davesurrey]

Here is the last picture of severe weather I was in.

It was taken at a petrol station in the USA and you cannot see it but there was thunder, lighting and a tornado behind the trees or out of the frame and heavy rain followed shorty, which was a big change from English weather.

I remember some of the girls with us were getting worried being there, afterall who would want to hang around in a petrol station in a thunder storm?



David

[wormy]

I have been in Florida, for about one and half years now. In 2004 alone, I had faced about 4 hurricanes, 2 changed paths at the very last minute. The first hurricane, Hurricane Charley swept a lot of things away, uprooting big trees etc. There was this tree, it was higher than the 3 storey apartment building I was in, uprooted after the hurricane swept past us. Well, I tried to go into the hurricane but the winds were at least 90mph, I think, I don't remember.

After Hurricane Charley, the rest were kind of boring, because Charley had already done most of the damages. Charley also left me 5 days without electricity, and I had to resort to boiling my eggs on top of candle flames. Took me at least 2-3 hours to get it half done. Well, it was a good way to kill time since there wasn't anything much to do, and everywhere outside just seemed so devastated.
We were supposed to be hit by Katrina, but she had changed her paths the last minute as well. I am glad that I'm leaving Florida this summer, because the hurricane season's about to start again, in June/July.

Yong Le

[Caitlin]

Hi Joe, Roger, David and Yong Le!
I had been tracking this line of storms when I first saw it hit the midwest. I also knew as the week went on my mom and I would be traveling further east away from the storm. So, when it finally caught up to us I wasn't surprised. My friend and I were as careful as can be in that situation....I suppose the most careful thing would have been to stay inside.

I've been through many severe storms, enough that half the time I don't even go to the basement anymore. They usually are just a bunch of lightning and heavy rain with wind. Nothing to be concerned about, just stay away from the windows!

I've never been in a tornado myself...though we thought we had a couple of years go. There's this gully by where we live with a neighborhood in it and straightline winds would have gone over it, but there was a significant amount of wind damage to the houses...not to mention our own. We thought the only explanation was a tornado, but it really was some wicked straightline winds.

That storm sounds cool Roger! Happen to have any pictures of it? Oh yes, did that shrub survive it's new home?

David-Even if you can't see the tornado behind the trees you can still see the sheets of rain. Awesome picture. Which side of the storm were you on? I bet that was an experience you won't forget!

I think I'd better stop babbling. I've got plenty more stories, but they'll be shared in time to spare you guys!!

<3 Caite

[roger]

Hi Caite,

Sorry, I don't think I have any photos now. And the shrub, and other debris, were reduced to a pile of ash within days.

The town where I live appeared in the Guinness Book of Records as holding the record for the largest hail stones ever to fall in the UK. Many were the size of cricket balls. The storm occurred one night when I was only about four or five but I do remember it, especially the broken windows!

Roger

[davesurrey]

Hi Caite

I was on the right of the storm and we drove down the road pass the cafe in the picture in a yellow school bus, which was a little hairy as the bus was quite old and had to battle with the storm to get us back to camp.

I bet you brought out your cricket bat for the hail Roger.


David

[Dave]

caite said:

That storm sounds cool Roger! Happen to have any pictures of it? Oh yes, did that shrub survive it's new home?
<3 Caite

Hello Caite! Great thread!!!

I'm not Roger but I know a bit about that 1987 storm, which occurred a few weeks before I moved house into the South of England. I listened to reports of it for most of the night after I heard an emergency weather forecast broadcast on BBC radio at midnight. The weather forecaster (from the UK Met Office) sounded a bit shocked actually, as he announced (when most people were asleep in bed!) that a wind gust of 100 mph had just been recorded in the Channel islands and it was heading rapidly in Roger's direction! He said there would be widespread devastation -- and he was certainly right about that. They also warned the government that the anticipated consequences of the storm were such that civil authorities might need to call on assistance from the military.

A few hours earlier, the evening forecasts had said the strongest winds would miss us completely and head into Germany. I didn't experience it personally but it was almost as shocking to the rest of the Country as we watched the video reports of wrecked houses crushed cars and swathes of fallen trees blocking hundreds of roads, on breakfast TV in the morning.

Although as Roger pointed out, the storm wasn't technically a hurricane, its winds were certainly as strong as many Atlantic category one or two hurricanes are on landfall - a fact conveniently overlooked by our Met Offfice when they defend themselves. An hourly average wind speed of 85 mph (HOURLY!) was recorded at Shoreham (hurricane is 74 mph for one MINUTE) and a 10 minute average speed of 80 mph was officially recorded at Lee-on-the-Solent, 5 miles from where I now live. These are equivalent to one minute sustained wind speeds of 97 mph and 91 mph respectively (1 minute sustained winds are how hurricanes are reported in the US and you can convert from one to the other). At least ten places reported wind gusts of 100 mph or more. We had a long discussion about this in a UK.science.weather newsgroup a couple of years ago and my conclusion (agreed and not challenged) was this:

If we convert all the official 10 minute mean wind speeds to to 1 minute mean wind speeds ("sustained" winds as used by the US National Hurricane Center) and apply the 0.88 conversion factor used in the US, at least one inland place (Herstmonceux, Sussex) and most of the South Coast from the Isle of Wight and Portsmouth eastwards probably experienced genuine hurricane strength winds that night. That, for me, settles the "hurricane" debate. From the man-in-the-street's point of view, The Great Storm of 1987 was a hurricane.

One little known fact is this. A weather station in Hampshire reported a rise in temperature from 8.5 °C to 17.6 °C (47.3 to 63.7 deg F) in 20 minutes in the middle of the night. That 9.1 deg C rise in 20 minutes is as rare as the wind speeds - a once in 200 years event for Southern England.

Cheers, Dave

Gosh, that ended up sounding a bit like my second rant in 24 hours!

[Caitlin]

Hi Dave! That storm sounds amazing! Too bad I wasn't born, and even if I would have been I wouldn't have lived in the right place anyhow!

I've done it again...managed to get stuck in a severe storm. Today when I went from my morning classes to the afternoon classes it was cloudy but warm. After my dance classes in one building I had to switch to the building where my acting classes are located and on the way it was raining. I turned to my friend next to me and said I wished it would thunderstorm.

Sure enough, two hours later it was thunderstorming out. Then an hour later and 10 miles to the north my mom and I were traveling to an appointment with quite a lightning show along the way. Soon it began to rain quickly with big heavy drops. As the rain picked up the traffic slowed down and it was then my mom and I realized it was hailing. We came to the bridge leading to an underpass and found traffic was stopped. People had stopped under the bridge to get out of the hail and were blocking all the lanes! We finally got through to the otherside, where unbeknownst to the people under the bridge, it wasn't hailing. Instead it was raining fiercer than ever.

We proceeded so slowly that under the next underpass we came to (which was flooded) we almost got stuck in the water!

About half a mile up the road traffic was completely stopped and we had know idea why. We sat in the car for 15 minutes (I was already late for my appointment) not moving. Finally we began to move and soon could see why we were stopped. The underpass had flooded (even more so than the last) and we had been waiting for the cars that were floating to be towed out and the drain cleaners to come and begin their job so we could get through.

We got to my appointment about forty-five minutes late with no further incidents, except for almost being blown off the road by the wind which we weren't expecting to come from the East.

I'm always wishing I have my camera at times like these (the lightning show was spectacular!), and each time I say, "I'll carry my camera round with me wherever I go from now on." Maybe one of these times I actually will!

<3 Caite

[roger]

As I said a few days ago, Caite you worry me!

That is twice in a week that you have been caught in a storm. It must be a lightening reaction to your electrifying personality!

Roger

[fusilier23]

Shocking.

[Caitlin]

I'm writing mainly to share some pictures from a couple weeks ago in which there was a very severe storm in which I was involved and got some neat pictures. Actually, as I write this we are under a Tornado warning. Actually, It's pretty neat. Where my friend lives (maybe half an hour away) there are 100 mile per hour winds.

When I woke up to this storm it was black as night, though it was 10am! The wind was blowing fiercly from one direction and the clouds were moving just as quickly in the opposite direction! It was raining very hard and there was hardly a break between the flashes of lightning: no time for thunder even!
Fortunately there was no tornado, but it looked like there might be one for a while...

oooh. Everything has gone completely still here! I'll probably be back with more pictures soon but enjoy those from the storm a couple of weeks ago.







<3 Caite

[Joe]

Hi Caite

I know that severe thunderstorms were near Minnesota this evening; I thought to myself "there goes our stormchaser"! I do hope that there were no tornado reports.

I liked those pics. Wow...that is a flat horizon. Those clouds look very angry.

Please be careful if you're out getting more storm pictures this evening!

Thanks for sharing, Caite !

Joe