Have you ever lived through an earthquake, tornado, hurricane, flood?

[chic]

I've lived through multiple hurricanes and one historic snow storm that shut my entire state down! But no tornadoes or floods. I never had to evacuate. I'm grateful for that. The blizzards are bad here, but years ago people dealt with shutdowns like that much better than they do now when everyone is in such a hurry to go somewhere.

Luckily we never have wildfires and that's a huge plus too.

 

[Been There]

All of the above, plus a typhoon

 

[katlupe]

Growing up in FL, I lived through a number of hurricanes. Here in NY, a few snow storms though I don't know if they were considered blizzards or not.

Not even a week after we brought our two horses home to our homestead (in the middle of the state forest), we had a tornado that took down over 300 trees around us. A few on the house. It was a nice day and all of a sudden started to get windy. We went inside and it took less than 5 minutes. We were frantic about the horses out in the middle of it. Trees falling around them and there was nothing we could do. We had plenty of firewood for years after that. The DEC came out and checked it out and said it was a tornado and had taken down a few buildings in the area including a huge barn.

 

[fuzzybuddy]

I forgot about ice storms. We had one about 20 years ago. There was some kind of weird weather thing, where it was raining in the upper atmosphere, but freezing when it got to the ground. All the trees had a 1 inch coating of ice one each branch. You wouldn't think the top of a 40 foot tree with a big thick trunk could bend and touch the ground. If you went outside, it sounded like guns going off, but it was tree limbs cracking and falling down. All the roads were filled with fallen and falling limbs-some thick huge ones. They were totally impassable. We were without power for 5 days. It was a huge swath from Ohio to New Jersey and most of New York.

 

[hollydolly]

Growing up in FL, I lived through a number of hurricanes. Here in NY, a few snow storms though I don't know if they were considered blizzards or not.

This was my daughter in NYC about 18 years or 20 ago.. snow was thick on the ground and there was a Heckava Blizzard

 

[oldaunt]

I forgot about ice storms. We had one about 20 years ago. There was some kind of weird weather thing, where it was raining in the upper atmosphere, but freezing when it got to the ground. All the trees had a 1 inch coating of ice one each branch. You wouldn't think the top of a 40 foot tree with a big thick trunk could bend and touch the ground. If you went outside, it sounded like guns going off, but it was tree limbs cracking and falling down. All the roads were filled with fallen and falling limbs-some thick huge ones. They were totally impassable. We were without power for 5 days. It was a huge swath from Ohio to New Jersey and most of New York.

Yep, just a normal late January here. Sad, considering I often have roses blooming at Christmas....hope you never have another one.

 

[Murrmurr]

All of the above, plus a typhoon

I forgot about the typhoons. I visited a buddy in Thailand and decided to stay for several weeks. Typhoons were pretty much a daily thing, at least while I was there. They always started at around 2 or 3pm, blew the hell out of the place and soaked everything down for a couple hours or so, and then they'd just stop, and it was business as usual. Sometimes they'd taper off, but if memory serves, they usually stopped abruptly.

I suppose that's why the trees there are so bendy and ...I don't know what's the right word; elastic? They go sideways during the storm, and then snap right back when it's over. That always fascinated me.

The people are great about letting strangers like me take shelter on their porches and what-not, and even serve you tea or whatever while everyone waits it out. They're real nice people. Very accommodating and gracious.

 

[Been There]

I forgot about the typhoons. I visited a buddy in Thailand and decided to stay for several weeks. Typhoons were pretty much a daily thing, at least while I was there. They always started at around 2 or 3pm, blew the hell out of the place and soaked everything down for a couple hours or so, and then they'd just stop, and it was business as usual. Sometimes they'd taper off, but if memory serves, they usually stopped abruptly.

I suppose that's why the trees there are so bendy and ...I don't know what's the right word; elastic? They go sideways during the storm, and then snap right back when it's over. That always fascinated me.

The people are great about letting strangers like me take shelter on their porches and what-not, and even serve you tea or whatever while everyone waits it out. They're real nice people. Very accommodating and gracious.

We flew through one while flying in the South China Sea, just far enough off the coast where the Chinese were kept at bay. If they would have started anything, their asses would have been fried. We had 2 Carriers and 6 other ships in an armada about 2 miles out from us. That may have been the start of WWIII.

Flying through that typhoon was and has been the worse flight I was ever on. At one point, we were flying at almost 90 degrees. I thought for sure we were going to go inverted and then with those huge transporters, had we rolled over and gone inverted, they would have had to go fishing for us because we sure would have ended up in the drink. I thanked God almost every day for months for having the best damn Naval pilot flying that ship we were on. It was only by accident that we were on that plane. After we finally landed, we found out we got on the wrong plane. It was almost like an act of God that we were supposed to be on that pane.

 

[Murrmurr]

We flew through one while flying in the South China Sea, just far enough off the coast where the Chinese were kept at bay. If they would have started anything, their asses would have been fried. We had 2 Carriers and 6 other ships in an armada about 2 miles out from us. That may have been the start of WWIII.

Flying through that typhoon was and has been the worse flight I was ever on. At one point, we were flying at almost 90 degrees. I thought for sure we were going to go inverted and then with those huge transporters, had we rolled over and gone inverted, they would have had to go fishing for us because we sure would have ended up in the drink. I thanked God almost every day for months for having the best damn Naval pilot flying that ship we were on. It was only by accident that we were on that plane. After we finally landed, we found out we got on the wrong plane. It was almost like an act of God that we were supposed to be on that pane.

Awesome story. I've read (and seen) countless times that American military pilots are the best-trained, most skillful on the planet. I imagine British and German pilots are also particularly skilled.

And it might be fair to say that, though it appears very disciplined, the Chinese military is less equipped now to face a 3rd WW than they were when your lucky flight happened. At least mentally. Think so?