Serious I almost died yesterday and shit (tornadoes) (scary weather)

[Xephyr]

So there I was, the morning (technically, but it was like 1:00 a.m.) of January 30th. I was playing League of Legends like a boss and was 7/2 with Draven. It was a good game I had going.

And then to my horror, there's sirens going off from every corner of this damn town I live in and my phone more or less exploded from emergency alerts and texts from worried friends.

So basically me and everyone else in the dorm complex I live in had to shuffle down to the basement (and I had to leave my game of League. I felt really bad because we were steamrolling but it turns out the team lost without me v_v), and we all just kind of chilled for a little while.

Well, depends on how you define "chill," because tornadoes are the single most terrifying thing on the fucking earth to me.

^ I mean look at that shit. Jesus fucking fuck if I ever look out my window and see a gargantuan ball of LITERALLY UNSTOPPABLE DESTRUCTION I think I will literally shit my pants and fall unconscous.

So I was pretty scared the whole time. Luckily, no tornadoes swept through my town, but one did literally about an eight minute drive from where I am currently typing this post.

The damage was pretty brutal and more than one person died from the entirety of the storms last night.

Weather is scary as hell and close calls with weather are even scarier. What kind of experiences have you guys had with brutal weather? I'm sure there are plenty of people here that experienced Superstorm Sandy or maybe even Hurricane Katrina, or tornadoes, or any of that stuff!

 

[Gabe]

Well, glad you're alive at least.

I live in California, and the only dangerous thing that is similar to that was an earthquake when I was a child. I always wonder how people get used to living in places where snowing, tornadoes, and hurricanes are a regular occurrence.

 

[PK Gaming]

Wow that was a close one

glad you're safe though

 

[Outlaw]

Hurricanes and tornadoes are the norm when you live in the southeast.

There's nothing more eerie then driving around town after a hurricane though. All grey and quiet.

 

[Fishy]

when i lived in indiana we would get pretty devestating snow storms sometimes, none that every made me fear for my life, but a lot of my relatives' power was out for a week, and would camp out at my place since we had power, but i think we used candles anyway just to not run too many things at once and jinx it!

i was in maryland around the time of hurricane katrina, but not close enough to the shore to actually be affected by it. still, there were heavy rains and hail storms that happened, and i thought it was a good idea to run around in them. YEP

still though, if ever i'm faced against a serious weather threat, i'll count my blessings. glad you're all right!

 

[Every1XplodeNOW]

I'm glad you're alright, tornadoes are scary.

I live in southwest Virginia and we experience all types of severe weather including blizzards, floods, high winds, sink holes(if you count those), mud/rock slides and even earthquakes. I wouldn't be surprised if a volcano just randomly pops pop. The weather is also bi-polar, one day it could be a nick 65 degrees and than the next would be 25. Though usually, they're not that bad, when it snows it's a pain since I live in a mountainous terrain, but most of the time it's not that bad. There's been of couple of bad snows, 1 really bad flood, and a sink hole appeared in the football field of a high school game, but it wasn't that big. So nothing really that bad.

Than came April 28, 2011. The area I live in hasn't seen a tornado in 40 years and the last one didn't do much of anything, so it wasn't something I didn't think much of. So this area wasn't really prepared for it when it hit. Lucky for me I guess, it missed the town I live in, but the neighboring towns of Chilhowie and Glade Springs that 6 and 8 miles away weren't so lucky. I remembered going through a trailer park in Chilhowie where a friend of mine lived that was hit. Trailers were ripped apart and flipped over, it just looked and felt weird. I mean yeah it's weird to see a trailer upside down, but destruction is just a weird sight to see. I can't really explain it, it's just despair. Glade Springs had it much worse. The interstate runs right through the middle of the town, so a lot of drivers were caught in it. I remember a friend's mom who working at a Iron Skillet right beside the interstate telling me how she saw a tractor trailer being pushed into the restaurant where she and them hiding in a freezer. I also remember a man my brother works with telling me how he took his daughter and hid in a closet, and when he opened the door, half of his house was gone. Hearing all these stories how people survived was amazing, but when I was finally able to ride through the town, my heart sunk. House were torn apart, debris was everywhere, a pizza place that me and my dad ate at a week before was completely gone, and what kind brought it all together was a church that was leveled with a cross sticking out of rumble that someone had placed.

I know my area wasn't hit as nearly as bad as with Katrina, Sandy, or Joplin, but seeing any type of devastation in person makes you open your eyes and think "Everything can be gone just like that".

Here's a video of Glade Springs from above

 

[TEA_DEMON]

the only really devastating thing i've experienced are the earthquakes from a year / year and a half ago. they did destroy pretty much the entire city centre, but luckily i was without any issues.

 

[junior]

the weather has been insane everywhere this year. global warming has really taken its toll i think. only the first month alone and i've experienced intense fortnight-long heatwaves in sydney and flooding and cyclones in brisbane.

is this seriously the beginning of the end for humans?

 

[Taylor]

To think most houses in the UK are made out of brick, and the US has so many wooden houses where tornados are common in America; all we have are strong breezes of wind.

At least you're ok. x

 

[MapleDoom]

The scariest weather I've seen was a typhoon... :()
It pays off to be Filipino sometimes, but glad you're safe.

 

[Danmire]

Oh man, I remember Hurricane Wilma. When it passed by our place, it was Cat. 3, and I was pretty young back then, so you would imagine my horror. The fence around my backyard was completely demolished, and since we live behind a park, all these big trees landed in our backyard. Pretty scary stuff.

 

[Seth Vilo]

We ban Tornadus-T and this is what we get for it...

I'm in the South East US, and we had that junk all day yesterday. In class there were three tornado warnings over the course of the 6 hours I was there. People were being detained in the hallways and not allowed to go anywhere near anything with windows; some people were late to class because of that detaining. Last night I kept waking up from the sound of the 100 ft tall pine trees outside my house slamming into each other thanks to the howling wind. Quite frightening.

Crazy weather. Here it jumps from 70F one day to 33F the next day... "Winter" my eye.

 

[Xephyr]

To think most houses in the UK are made out of brick, and the US has so many wooden houses where tornados are common in America; all we have are strong breezes of wind.

At least you're ok. x

This is kind of a serious issue when you think about it. I'm guessing it's a lot cheaper to make wooden houses, but it's also just so impractical to make houses that way in the regions like the Midwest. I don't know the stats or anything but I'm pretty sure there's dozens of tornadoes in areas like this every year, and brick houses would fare much better.

Of course, there's basically NO sort of structure that will ever be okay if the tornado happens to, say, pick up a car and heave it at a house, but still.

Which brings me to another point...tornadoes are so bizarre. They can demolish homes, launch multiple-ton vehicles several hundred yards from where it sat, rip trees out of the ground (this is probably the most incredible thing imaginable...fully grown trees getting UPROOTED? how is that possible? Roots are outrageously strong!!).......yet at the same time, there have been instance where a tornado has picked up a baby and...just gently set it down somewhere, and the child was perfectly okay.

How does this happen?! Is the phrase "Mother Nature" actually true? Does nature have a conscience?!?!?! It makes me consider so many weird philosophical and spiritual things that I never actually consider in other contexts when I think about it this hard.

 

[Diana]

Glad you're all right, I heard it was pretty bad down there.

We got really lucky, as up here the storms weakened when they went through my area (Ohio) because of the time of day. Really strong system too, air pressure fell a good bit on the cold front and the temperature went from 65 to 21 in a 24 hour span.

If there's one bit of good news from this, there probably won't be any more outbreaks like this for a while, the pattern for the short term at least seems to be a bit calmer.

Worst I ever had to deal with was the post-tropical remnants of Hurricane Ike in 2008, very odd 75 mph winds all the way up here.

 

[DM]

To think most houses in the UK are made out of brick, and the US has so many wooden houses where tornados are common in America; all we have are strong breezes of wind.

Building a whole house out of brick is wicked expensive. A lot of brick houses are only facades, the sides and back are siding. It looks gross.

Glad you're okay, Xephyr. Watching natural disasters strike around the country only serves to remind me how thankful I am that I live in Buffalo. Everyone loves to give us shit because "it's cold" and "it snows a lot", but snow can be plowed and you can wear more layers to keep warm.

 

[tape]

glad you came out all fine out of this.

living in a country where like almost half the year is hurricane season, plus our corrupted inept generally makes for quite some (mini)disasters every year, with huge floods in both the rural and urban zones.

although our last big, big hurricane was in the 90s, i dont really remember much about it aside from being stuck in my house for the entirety of it. dont remember much about damages.

Georges, a Category 3 storm, hit the DR on 22 September 1998. It is known as one of the deadliest and most destructive storms in recent history. Georges killed a total of 603 people on the island of Hispaniola, and caused a total US$6 billion worth of damage.

and we're like right in the middle of the hurricane's usual path >:|

edit: also I just remembered Haiti's earthquake in 2010. i just remembered we're right below a spot where 2 tectonic plates meet. we're pretty lucky, when you think about it i guess.

 

[Majestic Electric]

I live in California, and the only dangerous thing that is similar to that was an earthquake when I was a child.

 

[Brambane]

I remember once when I was fishing there was this wicked black cloud overhead. As we got closer to it, we noticed that it was making funnels that would touch the surface of the ocean and create water spouts. We got close enough to see the streams of water themselves spinning around.

That shit was the fucking scariest thing I've ever seen. I almost gave a new definition to the term "poop deck."

 

[Xephyr]

I remember once when I was fishing there was this wicked black cloud overhead. As we got closer to it, we noticed that it was making funnels that would touch the surface of the ocean and create water spouts. We got close enough to see the streams of water themselves spinning around.

That shit was the fucking scariest thing I've ever seen. I almost gave a new definition to the term "poop deck."

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