I’ve driven thru one hell of a sudden thunderstorm in a major downpour with a lightning bolt hitting the ground less than a hundred yards away from the road that shook the ground violently. My family and I were going to pick huckleberries but I pulled over till the storm passed over. That was too close for me.
6
No, but I’ve sailed through two of them!
9
Got caught out on the ocean a few years ago, about 70 scouts and dads in 9 canoes when a thunderstorm came up. We sprinted to shore – but were on a tiny beach, and the downpour was sending rocks down on us. Camped through a thunderstorm too. Nothing you can do, and you are at nature’s mercy. I sure wouldn’t chase after them.
8
Yep, I rode out a typhoon in the S. China Sea between Hong Kong and the Philippines in the Spring of 1974 on board the USS Kitty Hawk CV 63. It was an interesting few days till we got back to port in Subic Bay riding that typhoon out.
11
My poor parents had to otherwise I woulda’ been born at home. The hospital was running on generators when they finally got there.
6
Yes, if I had no one dependent on me and no one would have to risk themselves trying to “save” me from my stupidity. 🙂 Carpe Diem.
7
The last hurricane I was in had a low continual growl noise to it.
Clouds were whipping so fast across the sky.
Don’t care for it.
7
Also it’s not a good idea to be fishing with a long carbon fiber fishing rod, even when the thunderstorm is miles away, and you’re under clear blue sky. There’s a reason for the phrase, “A bolt from the blue”.
“Lightning can actually strike as much as 25 miles from where it originated. Scientists refer to this as a “bolt from the blue.”
You haven’t LIVED, ’til you’ve chased a tornado! 😉
I was STUCK in Hurricane Hugo in ’89, although I drove through the eye wall in western North Carolina that morning.
But a GOOD tornado (F3), is better than the ten BEST roller coasters, rolled into one! And that MOMENT when you realize, the tornado ISN’T going left OR right, but IS instead, coming right ATyou…AwwwwwwwwwwwwYEAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH! THAT’S the moment you realize how AWESOME tornadoes are… and how PRECARIOUS, LIFE is! 😎
9
…it was once my job to go play in tornados and I mentioned my Hurricane Andrew playtime here the other day, so yeah, I still tend to take sometimes stupid risks when I’ve got a job to do just from sheer force of habit.
I won’t repost it, but it’s here if you’re interested or insane, along with other people’s links to REALLY good weather sites.
But this one time my wife stopped me, though, and probably saved my life.
My wife had a troubling past as a child with a tornado, so she’s generally pretty skittish when the wind picks up, but when she was pregnant , it was off the hizzle. As a consequence, one day when I was preparing to go to my relatively new job at stupid o’clock, the weather alarms were going off, the winds starting to howl, and so was the wife.
I was still kinda fresh at work then and I was a TOUGH guy, plus her burgeoning belly told me of VERY near future pending expenses, so I was just gonna ride into the lightning-streaked sunrise and do my job, like I had so many times before.
Usually she’d just argue a bit, then let me go be stupid, but THIS morning was DIFFERENT. She was a Christian then and I was not so she had prayed alone, and was convinced that I was headed to death if I went out then. She begged, she pleaded, she cried, and I’m not made of stone with my pregnant wife weeping for my life in front of me, so I finally, grudgingly, agreed to be late until the worst was past, then we settled down to watch the Weather Radar.
The storm really wasn’t impressive where I was, but it really blew up over my employer, a half-hour away. This just made me even nastier because I figured they’d lose power, and no one would know how to recover my crap if it didn’t come back right.
She held my hand.
So finally, when the warnings had moved East and the storm threat was declared over, she finally released me into the still-dark, flashlit morn.
I got down the road OK until I got off the highway to the local streets, where things hadn’t been so well.
Little things, first. Dodging downed branches. Traffic lights out along with the surrounding neighborhoods. I then came on a semi and trailer on its side, so things were getting sideways. Got out and looked, it was a day hauler and empty, so no one home, move on, that wasn’t my job any more, but I called 911 to have them log it. (I had this hilarious bag phone then, the thing was HUGE, but powerful, so I got through).
Then the destroyed gas station caught my eye, with it’s peeled off roof and stove in windows. Huh, not good. They weren’t open at the time, though, so again, move on and log it.
I got on my work street and was pleasantly surprised. Normally if an elf farts in a distant wood we lose power, but today it had stayed up the whole time, local blackouts downstream notwithstanding. I went in and did a full day’s work, only dimly hearing all the sirens outside.
Then I went home, and found out what I’d missed.
The storm complex had a tornado that went diagonally across town, more or less up my route of travel. It was an F3 where I had seen the damage and flipped trucks on my road, had lifted up OVER my employer’s block for some reason, then came back down on the opposite highway and an adjacent residential neighborhood.
As an F5.
One entire cul-de-sac of houses were stripped to their foundations. People were smashed in their vehicles. One elderly couple had been sucked out of their bedroom and killed. It took a long time for that neighborhood to recover.
And I would have been driving in the F3 part at my normal time.
I won’t say I got religion, but it definitely gave me a lot to think about. Had I done what my arrogant ass WANTED to do, there’s a pretty good chance I would have never seen my unborn son, and my wife would have got a nice letter from my boss commiserating her loss and maybe $50 bucks if they passed the hat, and then would have raised my son in poverty without a father ’cause I didn’t have anything set by. I was young and tough, and would live forever.
What an idiot my wife married.
Thank God she listened to Him when she did, and risked an idiot’s wrath to follow her convictions. Needless to say I have since set up provisions as that was 21 years ago, but it was 21 years I may not have had if a scared pregnant woman hasn’t stood firm in the Lord.
I won’t say I don’t still play in storms, the moreso since my son’s now a grown man, but I thank the Lord he put it in her heart so I could SEE him grow up. Storms don’t play, and the line of death is quick and brutal, and there is no mercy in the whirlwind.
So get right with God.
Get life insurance and savings.
THEN go play in the storms.
God Bless,
SNS
11
…my very first fire was during a tornado. I won’t do the full version, but here’s the abridged version of me telling the Chief about the tornado warning in the next city over.
Me: Chief! There’s a tonado warning!
Chief: SO? Go pack up, you’re going inside.
….it was my first burn, and a good one, too.
I soon had enough imminent death to make me forget ALL ABOUT theoretical death, and also learned that you don’t HIDE from tornadoes, you WORK in them, but that’s a lot of different stories for another day…
3
Growing up in Tornado Alley and the thrill of ‘going to the basement’ is nearly the same adrenaline rush as when I was an EMT. There’s nothing like the awesome colors of the clouds in an approaching t-storm and/or tornado warning in the Midwest. Out here, mostly wind and blowing dust.
7
SNS: Did you ever consider writing a book about your experiences? Just copy your comments here over the last few years, and you’d have a great head start! Put me down for a signed copy! 🙂
5
SNS, I ditto Tony R!
5
Never went looking for trouble but all my shitstorms were on boats.
*was delivering a sailboat once when it’s mast got struck by lightning. God’s Flashbulb, right there. I couldnt see for almost half an hour.
*was at the helm of a sportfish once on the way out to the canyons when we went thru a line squall and got hit by lightning. The tower wasnt grounded well and one of the gensets shit the bed – smoke everywhere, that nasty burnt plastic smoke.
*I was a guest on a sportfish coming back to Palm Beach after swordfishing when we ran into an enormous line squall coming east off the beach. Nowhere to go but thru it. We picked the spot on the radar that had the least blood red to it but turned out that was where the waterspouts were. Boat laid over on its side and we got weedwhacked.
*another time I was out in the Florida Straits on my boat bottomjigging for Grouper and snapper. Rain clouds kicked in where it was like a cow pissing on a flat rock. All we did was lay the extra rods down on the deck and kept fishing while getting firehosed from above, lightning crackling all around us.
Good times….good times…
2
…thank you Ms. C and Mr. R, but it’s too hard to search iOTW by user, and I’m too lazy to write an old man’s maunderings down yet another time, plus I’d doxx myself in the process…also, getting permissions from people and agencies I lost contact with 3 decades ago to use their actual names would be MURDER, so I’ll just hide behind my cartoon logo and continue to annoy Rick something fierce by overposting if he ever comes back again, haven’t seen him in awhile come to think of it…
3
Mansfield Lovell AUGUST 28, 2020 AT 1:14 PM
“*was at the helm of a sportfish once on the way out to the canyons when we went thru a line squall and got hit by lightning. The tower wasnt grounded well and one of the gensets shit the bed – smoke everywhere, that nasty burnt plastic smoke.”
..forgive my ignorance of the nautical, but my experience with boats ends with rented party barges on placid lakes, so how do you ground any part of a ship at sea, and what’s a genset?
2
In my lifetime I’ve survived two moderate size tornados passing over my house or car while I was in each. Luckily in each situation they had lifted and were not touching the gound as they passed. Each ended up toughing down within miles of me and other people lost their lives. I consider myself quite fortunate. Who would have thought they would be in Marlyand and within 15 miles of each other and almost 20 years apart.
Believe me – it does sound like a freight train passing directly overhead.
I would never search out such a situation.
SNS – I’ve thought you could write a good book many times. You got one hellova collection of gem comments in here that read like short stories already!
Suggestion:
1. Collect your comments (from here on out, write them in a saved text file before posting).
2. Organize them as an anthology of related subjects.
3. Decide on a theme for the book.
4. Order and edit as necessary.
5. Write the ‘glue’ that ties it all together.
But hey, that’s just an old engineer’s approach. But all the young and aspiring EMS people out there really would benefit, I think.
4
SNS, I can collect your stuff if you want them.
It may take about a week (lolz).
Email BFH for my email addy.
No way.
I’ve driven thru one hell of a sudden thunderstorm in a major downpour with a lightning bolt hitting the ground less than a hundred yards away from the road that shook the ground violently. My family and I were going to pick huckleberries but I pulled over till the storm passed over. That was too close for me.
No, but I’ve sailed through two of them!
Got caught out on the ocean a few years ago, about 70 scouts and dads in 9 canoes when a thunderstorm came up. We sprinted to shore – but were on a tiny beach, and the downpour was sending rocks down on us. Camped through a thunderstorm too. Nothing you can do, and you are at nature’s mercy. I sure wouldn’t chase after them.
Yep, I rode out a typhoon in the S. China Sea between Hong Kong and the Philippines in the Spring of 1974 on board the USS Kitty Hawk CV 63. It was an interesting few days till we got back to port in Subic Bay riding that typhoon out.
My poor parents had to otherwise I woulda’ been born at home. The hospital was running on generators when they finally got there.
Yes, if I had no one dependent on me and no one would have to risk themselves trying to “save” me from my stupidity. 🙂 Carpe Diem.
The last hurricane I was in had a low continual growl noise to it.
Clouds were whipping so fast across the sky.
Don’t care for it.
Also it’s not a good idea to be fishing with a long carbon fiber fishing rod, even when the thunderstorm is miles away, and you’re under clear blue sky. There’s a reason for the phrase, “A bolt from the blue”.
“Lightning can actually strike as much as 25 miles from where it originated. Scientists refer to this as a “bolt from the blue.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o7OO4Ao6wb4 .
I invented hurricanes.
You haven’t LIVED, ’til you’ve chased a tornado! 😉
I was STUCK in Hurricane Hugo in ’89, although I drove through the eye wall in western North Carolina that morning.
But a GOOD tornado (F3), is better than the ten BEST roller coasters, rolled into one! And that MOMENT when you realize, the tornado ISN’T going left OR right, but IS instead, coming right AT you… Awwwwwwwwwwww YEAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH! THAT’S the moment you realize how AWESOME tornadoes are… and how PRECARIOUS, LIFE is! 😎
…it was once my job to go play in tornados and I mentioned my Hurricane Andrew playtime here the other day, so yeah, I still tend to take sometimes stupid risks when I’ve got a job to do just from sheer force of habit.
I won’t repost it, but it’s here if you’re interested or insane, along with other people’s links to REALLY good weather sites.
https://iotwreport.com/be-careful-out-there-2/
But this one time my wife stopped me, though, and probably saved my life.
My wife had a troubling past as a child with a tornado, so she’s generally pretty skittish when the wind picks up, but when she was pregnant , it was off the hizzle. As a consequence, one day when I was preparing to go to my relatively new job at stupid o’clock, the weather alarms were going off, the winds starting to howl, and so was the wife.
I was still kinda fresh at work then and I was a TOUGH guy, plus her burgeoning belly told me of VERY near future pending expenses, so I was just gonna ride into the lightning-streaked sunrise and do my job, like I had so many times before.
Usually she’d just argue a bit, then let me go be stupid, but THIS morning was DIFFERENT. She was a Christian then and I was not so she had prayed alone, and was convinced that I was headed to death if I went out then. She begged, she pleaded, she cried, and I’m not made of stone with my pregnant wife weeping for my life in front of me, so I finally, grudgingly, agreed to be late until the worst was past, then we settled down to watch the Weather Radar.
The storm really wasn’t impressive where I was, but it really blew up over my employer, a half-hour away. This just made me even nastier because I figured they’d lose power, and no one would know how to recover my crap if it didn’t come back right.
She held my hand.
So finally, when the warnings had moved East and the storm threat was declared over, she finally released me into the still-dark, flashlit morn.
I got down the road OK until I got off the highway to the local streets, where things hadn’t been so well.
Little things, first. Dodging downed branches. Traffic lights out along with the surrounding neighborhoods. I then came on a semi and trailer on its side, so things were getting sideways. Got out and looked, it was a day hauler and empty, so no one home, move on, that wasn’t my job any more, but I called 911 to have them log it. (I had this hilarious bag phone then, the thing was HUGE, but powerful, so I got through).
Then the destroyed gas station caught my eye, with it’s peeled off roof and stove in windows. Huh, not good. They weren’t open at the time, though, so again, move on and log it.
I got on my work street and was pleasantly surprised. Normally if an elf farts in a distant wood we lose power, but today it had stayed up the whole time, local blackouts downstream notwithstanding. I went in and did a full day’s work, only dimly hearing all the sirens outside.
Then I went home, and found out what I’d missed.
The storm complex had a tornado that went diagonally across town, more or less up my route of travel. It was an F3 where I had seen the damage and flipped trucks on my road, had lifted up OVER my employer’s block for some reason, then came back down on the opposite highway and an adjacent residential neighborhood.
As an F5.
One entire cul-de-sac of houses were stripped to their foundations. People were smashed in their vehicles. One elderly couple had been sucked out of their bedroom and killed. It took a long time for that neighborhood to recover.
And I would have been driving in the F3 part at my normal time.
I won’t say I got religion, but it definitely gave me a lot to think about. Had I done what my arrogant ass WANTED to do, there’s a pretty good chance I would have never seen my unborn son, and my wife would have got a nice letter from my boss commiserating her loss and maybe $50 bucks if they passed the hat, and then would have raised my son in poverty without a father ’cause I didn’t have anything set by. I was young and tough, and would live forever.
What an idiot my wife married.
Thank God she listened to Him when she did, and risked an idiot’s wrath to follow her convictions. Needless to say I have since set up provisions as that was 21 years ago, but it was 21 years I may not have had if a scared pregnant woman hasn’t stood firm in the Lord.
I won’t say I don’t still play in storms, the moreso since my son’s now a grown man, but I thank the Lord he put it in her heart so I could SEE him grow up. Storms don’t play, and the line of death is quick and brutal, and there is no mercy in the whirlwind.
So get right with God.
Get life insurance and savings.
THEN go play in the storms.
God Bless,
SNS
…my very first fire was during a tornado. I won’t do the full version, but here’s the abridged version of me telling the Chief about the tornado warning in the next city over.
Me: Chief! There’s a tonado warning!
Chief: SO? Go pack up, you’re going inside.
….it was my first burn, and a good one, too.
I soon had enough imminent death to make me forget ALL ABOUT theoretical death, and also learned that you don’t HIDE from tornadoes, you WORK in them, but that’s a lot of different stories for another day…
Growing up in Tornado Alley and the thrill of ‘going to the basement’ is nearly the same adrenaline rush as when I was an EMT. There’s nothing like the awesome colors of the clouds in an approaching t-storm and/or tornado warning in the Midwest. Out here, mostly wind and blowing dust.
SNS: Did you ever consider writing a book about your experiences? Just copy your comments here over the last few years, and you’d have a great head start! Put me down for a signed copy! 🙂
SNS, I ditto Tony R!
Never went looking for trouble but all my shitstorms were on boats.
*was delivering a sailboat once when it’s mast got struck by lightning. God’s Flashbulb, right there. I couldnt see for almost half an hour.
*was at the helm of a sportfish once on the way out to the canyons when we went thru a line squall and got hit by lightning. The tower wasnt grounded well and one of the gensets shit the bed – smoke everywhere, that nasty burnt plastic smoke.
*I was a guest on a sportfish coming back to Palm Beach after swordfishing when we ran into an enormous line squall coming east off the beach. Nowhere to go but thru it. We picked the spot on the radar that had the least blood red to it but turned out that was where the waterspouts were. Boat laid over on its side and we got weedwhacked.
*another time I was out in the Florida Straits on my boat bottomjigging for Grouper and snapper. Rain clouds kicked in where it was like a cow pissing on a flat rock. All we did was lay the extra rods down on the deck and kept fishing while getting firehosed from above, lightning crackling all around us.
Good times….good times…
…thank you Ms. C and Mr. R, but it’s too hard to search iOTW by user, and I’m too lazy to write an old man’s maunderings down yet another time, plus I’d doxx myself in the process…also, getting permissions from people and agencies I lost contact with 3 decades ago to use their actual names would be MURDER, so I’ll just hide behind my cartoon logo and continue to annoy Rick something fierce by overposting if he ever comes back again, haven’t seen him in awhile come to think of it…
Mansfield Lovell AUGUST 28, 2020 AT 1:14 PM
“*was at the helm of a sportfish once on the way out to the canyons when we went thru a line squall and got hit by lightning. The tower wasnt grounded well and one of the gensets shit the bed – smoke everywhere, that nasty burnt plastic smoke.”
..forgive my ignorance of the nautical, but my experience with boats ends with rented party barges on placid lakes, so how do you ground any part of a ship at sea, and what’s a genset?
In my lifetime I’ve survived two moderate size tornados passing over my house or car while I was in each. Luckily in each situation they had lifted and were not touching the gound as they passed. Each ended up toughing down within miles of me and other people lost their lives. I consider myself quite fortunate. Who would have thought they would be in Marlyand and within 15 miles of each other and almost 20 years apart.
Believe me – it does sound like a freight train passing directly overhead.
I would never search out such a situation.
…but never forget, Black Weather Matters…
https://youtu.be/znLG90V3H9E
SNS – I’ve thought you could write a good book many times. You got one hellova collection of gem comments in here that read like short stories already!
Suggestion:
1. Collect your comments (from here on out, write them in a saved text file before posting).
2. Organize them as an anthology of related subjects.
3. Decide on a theme for the book.
4. Order and edit as necessary.
5. Write the ‘glue’ that ties it all together.
But hey, that’s just an old engineer’s approach. But all the young and aspiring EMS people out there really would benefit, I think.
SNS, I can collect your stuff if you want them.
It may take about a week (lolz).
Email BFH for my email addy.