Snap Response - The Worst Weather

[VanQ]

I lived through the 2011 Queensland floods. My area was literally surrounded by a moat for about 3 days. I couldn't get to work but my electricity and internet still functioned so O had a free 5 day holiday from work.

I know a lot of people suffered from the floods and lost a lot so I shouldn't act too happy about it. I'm just glad I wasn't really affected by it.

 

[Dirkie]

The weather here isn't too bad physically, but it's depressingly grey and dull.

 

[Addendum_Forthcoming]

Sydney duststorm...

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The fact that idiots, like the one pictured, were still riding bikes and jogging in the early hours saddens me. It was a day that proved, once and for all, that many humans are purely mindless creatures without an ounce of self-awareness or basic survival instinct.

I felt sick just walking to the bus stop. By midday EVERYTHING was covered in sheets of fine, reddish dust. Welcome to Mars.

 

[Johnny Impact]

I live in New England. The worst thing ever to come through here was an incredible ice storm in '98. We were without power for nine days, and everything was covered in an inch of ice. We were inside and had a generator though so it wasn't actually that bad. Others had it way worse.

Worst weather I've actually suffered through was the drenching rainstorm when I hiked the Grand Canyon. I couldn't have gotten wetter jumping in a pool. Imagine a five-mile uphill hike wearing shoes that each weigh several pounds. Now imagine lightning is hitting the rim you're hiking up to every thirty seconds or so. Now imagine you can hear rockfalls every few minutes as something big breaks off under the force of the storm and slams its way down the mountainside. Now imagine it's so foggy you wouldn't be able to see a rock falling towards you until it hit. I imagine people who live through hurricanes have similar experiences.

 

[w23eer]

As a few people have already said, Ireland rarely boasts extreme weather. However gale force winds are moderately common during winter (and not unheard of during summer either) but they usually only occur in the really early mornings. I sometimes wake up to find small to mid sized trees nearly pulled from their roots. When you are caught in one, you have to be very careful, especially if you are near a body of water. I can't imagine it's nearly as bad as the hurricanes, earthquakes and tsunamis that many other parts of the world suffer through, but it's the best we've got.

The particular area I live in (coastal town) is particularly susceptible to flooding - but the worst it does is ruin your carpet. It is pretty damn annoying though.

 

[Areloch]

I live in Nebraska, the middle of the US. So while we tend not to get singular disasters, we do get a glorious smorgasboard of stuff thrown at us throughout the year. Heat waves, blizzards, tornadoes, flash flooding, droughts, with droughts can come fires, occasional windstorms, etc.

Always fun to go from below freezing to 80 degrees F in the course of 2 or 3 days.

 

[Politrukk]

The blithing worst time was when it started raining out of an open sky.

Not because it was dangerous, just the sheer audacity of the sky lying to me about being able to go for my run.


In second place probably that time I missed the Stratford flood by 2 hours or the storm on open sea, now obviously storms while at sea are coming but boy-oh-boy in terms of danger that's a whole new rodeo.

 

[happyninja42]

Well, where I live, the regular, and worst form of weather we have is tornados. They suck pretty hard, no pun intended. So I would say that's the worst for my area, the fact that they keep coming back every season.

 

[viscomica]

I live in Buenos Aires where nothing ever happens in terms of weather. Well, it is pretty damp all the time and it messes with my hair a lot (which is why I have to straighten it from time to time)
Appart from that, I happened to be at Washington D.C when there was a snow storm this February but even so, it wasn't a huge snow storm.

 

[MajorTomServo]

I have a pretty big fear of extreme weather. When there's even a chance of a thunderstorm, I'm glued to my computer or phone to check the radar and whatnot. Knowing this, my dad took me to a campground to visit his friend during an awful lightning storm. The power went out, sirens were going off in the distance, and a tree got struck about 20 feet from where I was standing. He wouldn't take me home until I was literally in tears (I was in my mid-teens at the time, so this didn't happen very often. Publicly, anyway) because he couldn't tear himself away from his friends for ten minutes to drop me off at home.

My dad's not always the most empathetic man.

 

[TristanBelmont]

The north-eastern part of Texas where I live has been a recreation of Seattle, more or less, for the last two or three months. Some rain, mostly dark clouds.
Humidity out the ass
Mosquitoes
MOSQUITOES

 

[Imperioratorex Caprae]

Let me see. I've been lucky enough not to directly be affected by weather but rather the outskirts of it. Though I did have a tornado pass directly over the house I was in once, which was weird because it got eerily silent then sounded like a freight train came by even though we didn't have any tracks anywhere within 100 miles of the area...
Hurricane Andrew hit in 1992, did the worst damage 20 miles from my house, but our area was relatively untouched except that it tore down our entire power grid for about 2 months. We had limited power after a month and weren't allowed to use A/C unless we were on generator power and off the grid. However Southern Miami was devastated... I mean it was unrecognizable, I still have pictures of it and it was insane. I remember early reports coming in that the Keys (where I lived) were wiped out... which turned out not to be the case thankfully. But the face of a lot of places we used to go in Miami were forever changed. I can look at those pictures and remember what those buildings looked like before the damage. Even today there are places where if you look hard enough you can see where there were once neighborhoods and trailer parks now just overgrown because no one bought the land and re-developed it. So many people lost out to insurance scams that never paid out.
A lot of things changed in South Florida post-Andrew.
Then there was that year where we had a few hurricanes cross Florida... one actually went up one way and back the other... it was nuts.
Again, the Keys were fine. Most we ever had when I lived there were a few tropical storms that dumped assloads of rain on us, some wind which cleared up a most of the coral dust (thank you, that shit was annoying) and a few tornadoes and waterspouts.
Hell we get waterspouts from time to time down there.
Eventually there probably will be another hurricane that will do some major damage to the Keys... but if so, and I happen to be down there, I'll be fine. Both my parents house and the garage are rated shelters for Category 5 hurricanes and unless floodwaters get above 20 feet, we're fine.

 

[Shraggler]

I live in a fairly moderate & temperate climate, so we don't get a massive variety of weather phenomena.

We had a heat wave a few years ago that broke records, causing daytime highs to be around 103/~40 °F/°C. The nighttime temps also remained around 90/~32 °F/°C, which was unusual.

As someone who uses a window fan year-round and hasn't used anything more than a sheet to cover himself during sleepy time, that was a *****. Temperatures dropped slightly over the next few days which was also unusual because we'll get "heat waves" where temps approach 90, but they didn't tend to persist more than a day or so. This was just out of nowhere and people around here had no idea what to do.

A few years before that, we had a wind storm [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanukkah_Eve_windstorm_of_2006] that left my neighborhood without power for 4 days in December (winter in the Northern hemisphere). I remember wearing a winter jacket under my blanket before going to sleep, with a little hood and everything.

I was driving home when the storm actually hit, late, past midnight, and it was eerie and terrifying. There was shit all over the roads, no artificial light what-so-ever, something that looked like a tree massacre, and gusts that caused the car to bump 'n slide all over the road. I'd be driving along and all of the sudden a gale would cause 2 tons of metal, plastic and rubber to slide laterally in an instant. It was incredibly unnerving.

Nothing that comes close to blizzards, hurricanes or tornadoes, though. I cannot understand why anyone would remain living in a location that effectively has guaranteed tornadoes. Hurricanes too, but they seem more ethereal than a visible column of spinning air. Tornadoes are scary as fuck, and the weird-ass cloud cover that accompanies them are just as horrifying. I couldn't be paid to leave some death trap like Oklahoma fast enough. The clouds are attacking: I'm out. Fuck it. Sell whatever I don't need and drive, ride or walk north.

It just taught me that ultimately you can put on clothing to get warmer, blankets, etc. If it's REALLY hot, you can only take off so much before you're just hot AND naked.

Which is why I loathe everyone around here who laments the "crappy weather" because it's 60 degrees Fahrenheit and cloudy, while also whining about any day over 80. Hate the weather? Move to California and relish in the delights of drought, fucking morons.