Have you ever survived a catastrophic weather event?

chic

chic

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All the devastation left in the U.S. by hurricane Helene and hurricane Milton has made me wonder how many SF members have survived a catastrophic weather event? How did it impact you? How did you cope? Did you suffer serious loss?

I survived the great blizzard of 78 which took the Northeast U.S. by surprise in Feb. 1978. Meteorologists really missed this one. It began to snow on Feb. 5th I think and snowed an inch - 2 inches an hour for two days. By the time it ended we had about 60 inches of snow. I was living at home and for some reason my whole family was home that day too. I was lucky not to be out on the roads ; so many cars were abandoned. Motorists were stranded.

We never lost our electricity which helped too and we had oil heat and a fireplace so we were nice and warm. Dad was a city official and had to coordinate snow plowing to free our city from the mess. At night he would take his snow blower and help whichever neighbors didn't have one. We had to help my grandparents also because they were too old to go out and buy food for themselves. Everyone was on foot for the longest time. The snow was so high we walked in the middle of the main street and were
feet above the storefronts. But not at the grocery store. The food sold out quick and we ate badly for a time. We delivered food to my grandparents then hiked back home. People were largely in very good moods about it all and many were taking pictures. But the lousy food reminds me of the pandemic.

I got a bad case of cabin fever because dad got everyone plowed out in my hometown but left our street to be done last! I was furious but in hindsight I understand he had a responsibility to the public So I was very lucky and really in no danger at all from this historic storm. What about you??? Please share what you survived.
 

My late husband, my daughter and I spent the whole night in a Ford Pinto on the highway between Toledo and the Michigan border once, stuck during a horrific snowstorm. We couldn't go any further in either direction on the highway. We didn't have boots or really warm coats and only two small blankets.

Luckily, we had lots of gas. I spent the night terrified between the two choices: keep the car running and fear that the exhaust would be blocked and we'd die of exhaust poisoning or don't run the car and freeze to death.

Peeing was done in a Dixie cup and tossed out the window. My daughter and I huddled together in the back seat under one blanket and my husband stayed up in the front with the other one. He did have a thermos of coffee so was able to stay awake all night and run the car on and off.

About 10 a.m. the next day, we were able to turn around and head back south until we found a town that had motel rooms.

Oh, and we made it through hurricanes and an earthquake, too. And a tent camping trip when a tornado passed right overhead (yes, it does sound like a freight train).
 

Years ago, in 1955, I was 9, Hurricane Diane wiped out most of PA, Conn. NY and MASS. 250 death toll. The hurricane eye passed over my home. The wind was so bad water was leaking around the windows. It wasn't rain as much as somebody dumping water out of a huge pail. Then the sun came out. Outside there was a big circle of dark clouds, but inside the circle it was sunny, warm and calm and not even a breeze. Then the wind picked up , and back to hurricane weather. I remember all the widows had rolled up towels to sop up the water.
After the storm, I remember going down this bridge I took to go to school. It was a cement bridge, and the water was coming down so hard that the bridge separated the flow into a bottom and a top surge. Then the bridge was gone. It didn't fall, it was totally gone. We were without power and water for a long time.
 
I've skied Tahoe ski resorts for 4+ decades. As a fresh powder skier, before most resorts outlawed overnight parking in their lots, would sometimes park overnight in such lots in order to be able to get onto lifts first when resorts opened the next morning and most others were still stuck in snowy often closed roads. Thus have endured inside my vehicles a few snowstorms of over 2 foot.

As a Sierra Nevada backpacker, have endured inside my tent, numbers of intense thunderstorms with horrible lightning and pea sized hail. Being outside in a flimsy tent or bivy sack during strong storms provides an intense visceral experience like our ancient ancestors endured, few today otherwise experience because they are hunkered down inside buildings while outside is raging. Below from an August 2017 storm at 10k+ elevation is hail not snow.

RC01264y.jpg

...Well it began to rain with a few of those large single drops that make noticeable splatting sound. And then a moderate rain of increasing intensity as thunder became louder. About 1:30pm intense terrifying lightning and thunder were right on top of me as I was glad that I'd moved my camp spot. Loud pea sized hail began pummeling my tent and quickly reached the epic intensity of the storm three of us endured on July 8, 20xx but without snow of that storm.

Very soon I went into max emergency mode as falling gravity accelerated hail began pounding water through pin holes and water resistant material even strong rain would not have. Additionally temperatures dropped with so much ice and cool water vapor in the air causing considerable condensation to form on the inside layer of my tent fly that the impacting hail would then blast off as mist. So everything inside the tent was becoming wet from mist. I used my day pack rain cover and rain shell to protect the top of my lower Marmot Pinnacle sleeping bag.

Hail bouncing and rolling off the wet sagging inward tent walls was piling up at the base of the tent tub floor sides with water now draining beneath the tent and at my foot end some had found a pin hole to start wicking through. I bring 2 long sleeve cotton and one short sleeve cotton t-shirts on trips.

The latter became my tent mop as every few minutes I would bend over to reach the far end of the tent and sop up a new puddle. With the UL1, the inside roof of the inner tent is bug mesh so drips from the rain fly first splash against that. Actually water was not dripping but spraying down with force from impacts on the top seam. I hoisted the t-shirt up right against the mesh trying to block the splashing. Hail pounding against the tent and outside landscape was at a loud roar only exceeded by thunderous claps every few seconds. My hand became icy cold and tired from stretching upward as the t-shirt was soon so wet it could not soak up anything more.

But the hail storm went on and on as did the lightning and thunder. The upper inner waterproof walls of my tub floor below the mesh was increasingly dripping water down getting items like my sleeping bag wet. I used my large cotton handkerchief to soak some of that up but the UL1 is so narrow that protecting gear that filled the floor space was futile. I wondered if this was going to be one of those nightmare crest storm scenarios where a really big thunderhead sits atop a peak and does not move, just dumping and dumping?

Looking outside beneath the vestibule, I could see a few inches deep of white and began wondering about hail avalanches since the slope directly above my position snow avalanched during winters. After a half hour as a helpless mortal blob of protoplasm, I as a religious person blurted out loud to God in essence that ok yeah You are in control and I am at your mercy. About 5 minutes later it eased up and over the next hour and one half kept raining with occasionally modest hail and lightning thunder but never as intense as that first half hour. I humbly lived through it but could easily imagine not surviving due to hypothermia if such a storm had kept pounding down soaking my sleeping bag and clothing...
 
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In '67 we had a small earhtquake in Scotland . It threw us out of bed, and shook the contents of the house generally... in our little prefabricated house ( prefab).. which had been built all around the city to replace the house which had been bombed during the war

prefab-HD.jpg
However it caused the tenement which was already on very weak ground to colapse, and my Auntie Jean lived in the ground floor flat and she was killed..


In 2007 we had a Tornado in Spain , and it ripped the roof off my 4 storey Casa... I was on my own in the house, , it ripped up my palm trees in the garden... I really thought the house was going to fall on me !!
 
chic said:
All the devastation left in the U.S. by hurricane Helene and hurricane Milton has made me wonder how many SF members have survived a catastrophic weather event? How did it impact you? How did you cope? Did you suffer serious loss?

I survived the great blizzard of 78 which took the Northeast U.S. by surprise in Feb. 1978. Meteorologists really missed this one. It began to snow on Feb. 5th I think and snowed an inch - 2 inches an hour for two days. By the time it ended we had about 60 inches of snow. I was living at home and for some reason my whole family was home that day too. I was lucky not to be out on the roads ; so many cars were abandoned. Motorists were stranded.

We never lost our electricity which helped too and we had oil heat and a fireplace so we were nice and warm. Dad was a city official and had to coordinate snow plowing to free our city from the mess. At night he would take his snow blower and help whichever neighbors didn't have one. We had to help my grandparents also because they were too old to go out and buy food for themselves. Everyone was on foot for the longest time. The snow was so high we walked in the middle of the main street and were
feet above the storefronts. But not at the grocery store. The food sold out quick and we ate badly for a time. We delivered food to my grandparents then hiked back home. People were largely in very good moods about it all and many were taking pictures. But the lousy food reminds me of the pandemic.

I got a bad case of cabin fever because dad got everyone plowed out in my hometown but left our street to be done last! I was furious but in hindsight I understand he had a responsibility to the public So I was very lucky and really in no danger at all from this historic storm. What about you??? Please share what you survived.
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I remember that one well. We were in Providence, RI. The city closed down for a full 5 days. A couple of people who worked nearby with my husband stayed with us because walking home was too difficult. The guy, who was Italian, had a modified afro which after walking a couple of miles was covered with inches of snow and looked like a giant snow ball. (There was a market within walking distance although the shelves were beginning to look bare.)
A few days later we lost heat and the oil trucks could not deliver. Then we all made the trek to one of their homes for the duration. We never lost power and considered ourselves luckier than most. Many were stranded on the highways.
 
Hurricane Hazel hit Toronto in 1954. All I can remember is sitting on the steps to basement and watching things float around. I was 5.

Thereā€™ve been snow storms which cut off power for a few days. One was in ~1968 and the city park looked like a magical glass wonderland. It wasnā€™t safe to walk under those trees as chunks of ice or branches started to fall.
 
We lived in Wichita, KS. for about 4 years, back in the late 1960's. Our neighborhood had a big tornado shelter, and every year we had to run over there 3 or 4 times. One time, a tornado destroyed a small shopping center about 1/4 mile away, and scattered debris all over our area. When I got a chance to leave that area, it didn't take more than a few seconds to say Yes.
 
GoneFishin said:
The blizzard of 77
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I remember that. That was after I left home so at the time I lived in an apartment building. The balcony was completely snowed in. It took a long time before all the roads were cleared. Parking lots had snow mountains 20 to 30 feet high.

Iā€™ve survived a few tornados , hurricane fiona a couple of years ago and one black out that lasted 5 days. We had no generator at the time so our two freezers full of food were lost.
 

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