What is the scariest weather you have ever experienced?

[potatoarms]

Hello

What is the scariest weather you have ever experienced?

When I was 5 years old - I remember being picked up from school and the storm force winds were so strong that tiles were being blown around everywhere, nearly flying into mine and father's face. That was scary.

What about you?
Potatoarms

[Lacero]

It was raining really heavily with strong wind gusts while I was walking to school. The wind turned my umbrella inside out and I got a smack full of rain on my face. It hurt! That's about the extent of my climatogical adventures.

Here's to the Crazy Ones http://forums.macrumors.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=35452 (http://www.uriah.com/apple-qt/movies/think-different.mov)

[vniow]

Dunno, its kinda a tie from different perspectives. I remember when I was in middle school, a 318mph mile wide tornado ripped through our small rural Midwestern town and destroyed half of it, didn't touch our house but came pretty damn close. When I moved with my family out here to CA we had these two giant redwood trees that grew under out porch and it turns out they weren't all too stable. It was raining pretty bad for a couple of days and the ground got so wet and muddy that one of the trees fell, uprooting our entire porch with one end and making a big hole in our shop with the other. The other one fell shortly after when we had some people who deal with fallen trees come over and try to take the other one down.

So larger scale, tornado. Smaller more personal scale, rain + trees.

[bousozoku]

Probably the scariest weather I've known would be near blizzard conditions with painful sleet adhering to the road, making the road slippery and making the visibility short.

[miloblithe]

When I was living in Siberia I rode the bus to the city when it was -36 degrees. My Siberian neighbors thought that was pretty stupid because if the (minimally heated) bus breaks down you could be in trouble. I was under the impression that they were being overly cautious.

When I was in Ukraine I got really, really drunk drinking on the Odessa Steps (outside) in December. If I hadn't been with friends, I might have passed out outside and frozen.

[Blue Velvet]

The Wahine Storm. (http://www.nzhistory.net.nz/Gallery/police/wahine.html)

Also see:
http://www.wcl.govt.nz/wellington/wahine.html

I was five and remember it clearly to this very day — roofs coming off houses. Absolutely terrifying.

[clayj]

Two events:

I was on the Outer Banks of North Carolina in September of 1996, when Hurricane Fran was coming up the coast. We did a lot of worrying about having to evacuate, but Fran diverted inland and kicked the crap out of Wilmington and Raleigh, sparing the OBX. All we got was a LOT of wind for a couple of days. I had to drive home through the hurricane zone, and it was a mess... 300 year old oak trees ripped completely out of the ground near my Mom's house in Raleigh.

And when I was in college, I was sitting in my car in the middle of a thunderstorm when lightning hit about 10 feet behind my car. Yikes.

EDIT: Forgot one... landing in Telluride, Colorado in a propeller-driven United Airlines plane (I think it was "Mesa Airlines", their feeder affiliate) during the middle of a nasty thunderboomer... it was the one time I've been scared in an airplane.

[iSaint]

Me and my daughter were in the hall of a church with an approaching tornado, and my wife and son were five miles away at home when the tornado went within half a city block of them. That was a few years ago. I'm sure as a child I perceived much worse situations than that.

[Stinkythe1]

Katrina

[XIII]

Dunno if this counts... but in Southern France in the massive heat waves of a couple of years ago, we emerged from a supermarket with 4 forest fires storming all around us. There were people screaming, you could hardly see anything for smoke all around, and there was no exit - flames all around. The roads were in a deadlock, and no one was getting anywhere. After ~3 hours in the car, having hardly moved, we eventually drove through a fire area, to where we were staying. Got within a few dozen metres of the flames, pretty worrying.

[eva01]

I live in New England so there are too many to choose from :P

[OutThere]

Soon after New Years I was in Indiana, about to fly out of the airport when the sky turned yellow, it started hailing and lighting and there were funnel clouds forming on the horizon. Needless to say I rescheduled my already delayed flight. :p

[XIII]

Me and my daughter were in the hall of a church with an approaching tornado, and my wife and son were five miles away at home when the tornado went within half a city block of them. That was a few years ago. I'm sure as a child I perceived much worse situations than that.

Ouch. That sounds pretty horrific.

[Mitthrawnuruodo]

Well, apart from the time lightning struck our house and a spark shot from the pickup arm down to the LP on my old record player not more than 25 cm (10 inches) from my head (I had it standing at my night stand at the time, and I was laying in bed listening to music), and scared the sh...pooh out of me, weather has never really seemed that dangerous to me. Have seen a couple of awesome thunderstorms after that, too, and I find them facinating and not frightening.

Ok, we have the occasional Winter storm or severe rainfall causing floods here at the western coast of Norway, actually causing some casualties in landslides this fall, but since I'm not stupid enough to get a house in a very steep mountain side or too near a stream/river or go out and look at the ocean in too strong wind, with unpredictable waves and pouring rain, I don't think I have anything to fear... :)

Closest I've come to being afraid, the last couple of years, was when we got caught in a snowstorm driving over a mountain pass just north of Bergen, two years ago, and for a while lost sight of the car in front, not to mention the road. Kind of creepy when you know there are cars in front and back, a solid rock surface on the left and a very long drop on the right (and only partial guard rail) but we got down just fine... ;)

[Peterkro]

I remember the Wahine BV though I was in Oz at the time.The worst I've been in was a storm a bit earlier,leaving Wellinton on the Ferry (IIRC the old Maori to Lyttelton) and the Queen was there on Britannica I watched it and I think the Waikato leave the harbour,I found out later six ratings on the Waikato were sweep overboard whilst saluting the Queens leaving,I seem to recall one actually drowned.Anyway a bit later the Maori left after much humming and harring,jesus a boat that size leaving the crest of the wave then dropping seemingly endlessly till the full weight crashed into the next one, as far as I know everyone on board except a couple off crew members threw up,messy.Mind you the Southeast storm was pretty hairy here in London,myself and a friend were walking around Brixton with Hard hats on,full sheets of corrie flying through the air take your head off as soon as look at you.One house in my street collapsed(nobody in it fortunatley)and one burnt down(power was off and people were using candles probably for the first time in their lives.
sorry I thought this post would be directly under BV's guess I got waylaid,anyway its her post I was refering to.
PS for those that don't know Cook Strait in NZ is one of the roughest sea areas in the world.

[2nyRiggz]

im going to have to say hurricane andrew when i was 14yrs...my father, myself and others around the block had to cut down this huge tree whiles the strom was heading towards the island. the wind was starting to kick up and it got real dark and we got that giant tree down like in 5minutes and pulled it with ropes into the bushes....one of those leaves hit me really hard on my cheek :(


Bless

[Ashapalan]

this has made me appreciate how fortunate i am.

Worst that i have had is torential downpour and a complete 'fog over' whilst in Wales in a speed boat.

Was scary not knowing where i was, wondering if i was drifting out to sea or towards rocks.

Stange thing was, after slowly moving out and leaving the fog, it was only in our area that it was.

[tangerineyum]

i dont know what weather is, i live in socal. And while most im sure would appreciate the moderate climate i find it kind of boring and then i get miserable when i travel to other places and have to wear more than shorts with a polo. Some weather would be nice, but nothing like what the rest of you have experienced.

[latergator116]

Not really scary, but last year we got a 2 foot (70 cm) snow storm . The city basically shut down and I was shoveling for a good two days. I had a picture on computer, but I think I lost it when my HD crashed

[iDM]

Close to 20 foot seas with an approaching typhoon in the North Pacific near the Aleutians. Our ship was rolling so much that the horizon disappeared from one window while only the sea was visible from the other.

[xsedrinam]

Tornado jumped over top of our house, flattening the houses across the street.