Hurricanes and Storms

Bob's experience

Typhoon, Philippine Sea, 1966

We departed from Guam in the afternoon in July, 1966 heading 1800 miles west to Clark Air Force base in the Philippines. We are flying 200 nautical miles an hour (a nautical mile is about 1.15 real miles). It's another nice day to cross the Phillipines Sea. I update my fuel consumption chart. I get a sun line every 45 minutes. As the day passes the sun line changes from a speed line to a course line.

There are dark clouds ahead. I turn the weather radar up to it's maximum range of 100 miles. I see a solid black wall 75 miles ahead. The pilot asks if we have enough gas to go back. I tell him no. He wants to know if we can divert North to Taiwan. I tell him there is no way we have enough gas.We are at 8,000 feet. Nobody predicted a typhoon. We press ahead. Night is falling.

As we enter the wall we hit a severe updraft. The altimeter looks like a clock gone crazy. We are climbing thousands of feet a minute. We pass 16,000 feet and put on our oxygen masks. It's really turbulent. The pilot noses us over into a dive. The airspeed goes from 200 to 450 and hangs there. We're diving and still going up. Blood boils above 30,000 feet without a pressure suit.. We hit 22,000 feet, still diving, still going up.It's pitch black except for red instrument lights. The pilots talk to each other..."holy s**t these controls are stiff" one says.

Then comes the first downdraft. The combined effects of the downdraft and dive are spectacular. The pilots stop worrying about boiling blood and start to worry about hitting the ocean. They put the plane into a climb. The flight engineer kicks in the superchargers. We go to MAX power. The engines start to overheat and are approaching red lines for heat and RPM. The airspeed drops to 130 and the stall warning klaxon sounds continuously. Still we plummet. We pass 3,000 feet.

This aircraft is old. The wings fall off sometimes with just moderate turbulence. The airplane is climbing and falling and bouncing and shuddering on the thin edge of stalling. The stall warning horn keeps playing it's tune. The pilots talk again on the intercom. One says "don't lose it". The other grunts. Oh. Here's another updraft in the nick of time. The cycle repeats. Again. and Again.

Eventually we make it to Clark AFB. We go to the O-club and listen to the 1940's style Phillipino big band. We go home to our crew trailer. We look at the sky for vampire bats. The trailer entrance smells intensely of very rancid sweat. My cousin, was at Clark AFB that day for medical treatment. He had just been wounded for the third time (shot though the lungs with an AK-47). I didn't get to see him.

Nyree's experience

Boxing Day Hurricane, Scotland, December 1998

"The forecast was for gale force winds, something we are very much used to. As our house faces west, we are very exposed.



"As we settled down for the evening, we were aware that this was no ordinary gale. The building was "humming" and despite concrete floors, it vibrated. Very disconcerting. This was serious weather.



"The noise of the wind was like nothing we'd ever heard before. Upstairs, we had to shout to hear each other. It was just "like a Train" - as many folks say. We couldn't actually see out our west facing windows because of the rain and debris so my north facing window was our portal - pots, sledges, arials, bins whizzed along the street or up in the air.



"Around 830pm, I noticed my neighbour in the street behind staring over to our house. As I looked down I could see what appeared to be a garage roof lying by the door. I went to investigate - more fool me - and was nearly blown away as the eddies whipped round our odd shaped building. So, hanging on to railings, I made my way to a vantage point which confirmed my hunch was right. It was our roof lying down there! We hadn't even heard this happen because of the roar of the wind.



"Half an hour later, the drips started upstairs, the lights flickered continuously and eventually went out (and remained so for two days). By next morning the storm had died down to a still eerie calm (as it turned out the winds came back that night). By this point, we now had approx 80 containers collecting water.



"The devastation of the hurricane was saddening. Mangled greenhouses, trees down, tiles and roofing ridges everywhere, debris strewn everywhere.



"We decided to venture out into the beautiful cloudless, windless morning. First thing we saw was the remainder of our roof lying on top of someones car. It was a write-off. Other sections of roof had smashed their way along neighbouring homes - collapsing chimneys and holing roofs. Some people couldn't get out into their rear gardens because our roof was blocking the whole of the back of their houses!



"Walking round the rest of the village, we saw scaffolding down, satellite dishes folded like clams, incredible amounts of roof tiles. The village lost around 100 trees and virtually all the ancient Scots pines that were part of the original estates. Someone lost their beautiful monkey puzzle tree. It was snapped like a match from the root.



"Out of everyone we know, we came off worse. Over the next three months we battled to keep up with the drips and with council architects until eventually the water started getting into the walls and moving downstairs. We had to move immediately and I can tell you, packing up a three bedroom house and redecorating another house in under four days was hard work.



"Unfortunately we weren't insured (needless to say we are now).The house was stripped back to bare plaster and all the ceilings pulled down to allow it to dry out. I picked the decor and the council did
the redecoration for us. While all this went on, we had an opportunity to replace the dated kitchen, so I suppose, it was worth it.

Nora's experiences

Hurricane Opal, Georgia, September 1995

"I was indoors during both of the hurricanes, one of which was Hurricane Opal, a freak storm that came all the way up through Georgia while remaining a hurricane (rather than tropical storm). It was also very late in the year for a hurricane: they're named in alphabetical order, and the 'O's are seldom reached. The power failed at some point, and we all slept downstairs in case a tree fell on the top story. None did, but a neighbour lost two trees, and there was damage to power lines (hence the failure) which left some people in the dark for about three days. We didn't have to go to school the next day, I suppose because they were worried about trees blocking roads and possible damage to school buildings. That wouldn't have taken much, as we had classes in trailers, but as far as I remember they were fine. There was some flooding, which didn't affect us because we were on a hill."

Hurricane Alberto, Florida, August 2000

"I was down in Florida for the other storm, which was if anything less eventful. Floridians are used to these things; they build for them and they don't get too worried when they happen. (There is a very funny story, though, about my grandmother, a northerner, trying to sweep floodwater out the front door.) The odd, unusually strong hurricane such as Andrew doesn't follow this rule, but this one was fairly mild: I think its name was Alberto. For me, it was exciting, because my grandmother's house where we were staying is on the bayou, and I watched the water in the storm. I can't remember if it damaged her dock; I know we lost the canoe in Opal a few years later. Alberto (if I'm right about the name) followed us home to Atlanta as a tropical storm / depression, and we drove through very stiff winds. That was probably more dangerous than the hurricane."

Atlantic Storm, Dublin, October 2000

"Having recently moved to Ireland, I experienced my first gale in October, 2000. I walk part of the way to school, and I found it hard going that morning, as the wind was against me. Then the Dart¹ refused to continue past Dun Laoghaire, so I got off and called my mum, who called school, who told me to get the next Dart home while I still could. Sure enough, the line between Dalkey and Bray was flooded and covered by a mudslide later that day. The river Dargle rose without bursting its banks, while the town of Newtownmountkennedy was flooded; the Dart was out for the next week or so, and the buses were always packed. Gales are very different from hurricanes: they're cold and generally don't have lightning. The approach taken is very different, even when it's a strong storm: normal people go out in them, with video cameras to sell footage to news crews."

Ball Lightning

Watermusic's experience

Portugal, March 2004

"We saw ball lightning in the middle of our lounge last night. It was bright blue/white, about the size of a pea, and only lasted a second or so, exploding, in a pop/phutt (like a spark from a wood fire), to about the size of a hand. It appeared to be stationary."

"This was followed immediately by lightning outside. The initial flash of a series of three close ones. The second and third strikes tripped the house main fuse (the third also must have tripped a grid fuse plunging the local village and surrounding houses into temporary darkness). The district supply line runs across around 150m away from the house."

"All four of the family saw it, about 5 metres from where we were sitting. The dogs, including the one asleep more or less directly underneath, totally ignored it."

"It was not near anything electronic. The nearest metal object was a brass ornament. It was more or less in the centre of the room, about 1.25m from the floor."

Earthquakes

Shanana's experience

Magnitude 7.9 Earthquake, Alaska, November 2002

"IT WAS AWESOME!"

"We get lots of earthquakes, so it wasn't tremendously out of the ordinary, I thought. However, I should have been tipped off by the fact that we had had three earthquakes of decent magnitude in as many weeks. My family and I had started guessing magnitudes for the fun of it and usually we're pretty ok at guessing correctly. Not this time.

"It was about 1pm or so in the afternoon and my mother, brother and I were standing in the kitchen after church, chatting about something. There was a gradual sort of wavy motion, but I thought it was just my equilibrium acting up again until Sean said "Are you feeling that, too?" And we all agreed. So I peeked out the window and saw that the trees were shaking.. but not like they usually do during an earthquake. It looked like transverse waves were going vertically up them. Then I saw that the earth was rolling and we all started to get a bit sea-sick because of the rolling and pitching.

"Not one to take chances, I immediately demanded my family get into the doorway of the kitchen because the waves I was seeing were surface transversal waves - the kinds that do damage. And they were very noticeable. About the point we all got into the doorway, the waves moved on and all was well. Total, we guestimated the length at 2 minutes or so (which was quite long, mind you).

"There was no shaking, no loud boom, no real noticable impact. Except the sea-sickness. We then guessed that it muct have been about a 6 or so and probably from around the fault about 40 miles north of Anchorage in Wasilla that had been moving about a bit and had caused the other two quakes. So we went on with out lives.

"As usual, I go on the bus and the whole school was abuzz with the story of the earthquake. Except everyone else watched the news and knew more than I did. I still ran around, claiming it was a 6er until I saw the newspaper after lunch - saw the roads, the pipeline, the devastation. And then I saw that it was a 7.4 and people in Louisianna felt it due to the shallow nature of it. I was floored. I thank God that the worst damage aside from monetary was just a broken arm.

Best of all, the President finally acknowledged that it was a disater zone and the people of Tok and the state of Alaska are getting funds to rebuild and are pretty much done for now."

Gnomon's experience

Magnitude 5.8 Earthquake, Crete, May 2002

"One night as we we had just got into bed and were settling down to sleep, there was an earthquake. Not being used to earthquakes, we didn't realise what was happening: the whole house shook, but not enough to knock anything over. There was a deep rumbling sound. Nobody was injured, although some people were very frightened. People walking along the street outside never even noticed anything happening, although every dog in the neighbourhood started barking. We found out afterwards that it was about force 5.8 on the Richter scale, with its epicentre in the sea about 150 km north of us. "

Shanana's experience

Magnitude 5.4 Earthquake, Alaska, February 2002

"In February of this year, Anchorage had a nice little tremor. It wasn't enough to do any major damage (a few pieces of China here and there, and random crack in a few walls), but it scared the bejesees out of the whole population.

"Fortunately for me, my school just happened to be situated about 2 miles from the epicentre (focus 13 miles deep). There were two quakes about 45 seconds apart. The first was called a 5.4, but it wasn't very strong - a few rumbles, a little bit of a rolling. You know, typical tremor we get once a week (only a mite bit stronger and really deep). Well, the aftershock is what got us. Though the aftershock was only a 5, it was much closer to the surface, therefore, the intensity was greatly increased.

"I was on the top floor of my school (five stories) doing a few titrations in a Chemistry lab when the first quake hit. We all looked around and wondered if we shouldn't get under a desk or two as that might not have been the worst of what was happening. We all edged a bit closer to the tables and away from the lab, when the second quake struck. It felt like a semi-truck had hit the school full-on and with a load of concrete to boot.

"Well, we all scampered under tables, except that we all happened to be in one congested spot, therefore jumping under the exact same table. Yup, 9 people under a single lab table. As the ground was shaking, I, my Chemistry teacher, and another student crawled to other desks and waited out the end of the quake. It lasted about 45 seconds and then everything was deathly quiet.

"My classroom was the only one with any noticeable 'damage'or effects from the quake in that two light fixtures had swung loose. Of course, this was cause for great amusement in the class, as the day before, my classmates were taking bets on when/if I would get maimed in any way, and getting knocked out by a light fixture was the most popular choice. (the reason for these bets was that I'm rather.... accident prone [to say the least] and had already burned my hand on a slightly-less-than-red-hot crucible and shot nitric acid in my eye...)

"Fortunately, all was safe and sound - I just can't wait for the 'big one'!"

Apparition's experience

Magnitude 6.2 Earthquake, Edgecumbe, New Zealand, March 1987

"While I was in school in 1987 the Edgecumbe earthquake hit the town I was living in. My class was outside on the netball courts at the time, when the ground started swaying side to side. Those that didn't fall over at the time headed for the ground rather quickly. I sat down as soon as I could because falling onto volcanic chip tarseal was going to hurt. As I sat down I saw a some concrete outside a classroom lift out of the ground, not totally unlike a movie. By this time the ground was rocking side-to-side and was making circles.

"There was an aftershock of five point something or six and after that, the whole school was lead onto the grass sports fields to wait for our parents and to swap stories. I found out that people in their classrooms dove under desks and held on for the ride as those desks made their way around the insides of classrooms.

"My Father came to pick me up and drive me home. That's when I saw the damage (being a small town there were few buildings over one floor). The mall was a wreck and the footpath was broken and jaggered. There were tremors through the night and afterwards the army moved in. Later, the prime minister visited and it was six weeks or so before we were back at school.

"No one died in the quake but some people died of a heart attack when a state of emergency was declared".

Woodpigeon's experience

Magnitude 7.4 Earthquake, Istanbul, Turkey, August 1999

"A previous job as an IT consultant found me travelling to Istanbul on August 17th, 1999. We arrived into the city late in the evening, and by midnight I was asleep in bed. At 2.45 that morning I was awoken by a phone call from reception (I think they had got a wrong number), but as I was settling back to sleep, suddenly the entire room started to shake, a lot like the effect of air turbulence on a plane. Although nothing fell off the lockers or anything like that, what disconcerted me the most was that the whole room began to weave, creak and groan like a boat at sea. I was frozen to my bed, unable to register what was happening, as earthquakes are not exactly commonplace in Ireland. The quake seemed to go on forever, but in reality it was less than 1 minute. At the very end, the lights all over the hotel went out. Then there was a deathly silence.



"'Earthquake', I thought, but I didn't know whether it was big or small, so bizarrely I logged on to the internet almost immediately afterwards to see if anybody else had reported it. Strangely, no-one had, and all I remember was a web-cam of some guy in the USGS staring at a monitor with a worried look on his face, and a cryptic report from somewhere else alleging that something big had just occurred. I logged onto H2G2 as well, and I think I sent a few messages, but I got no answers. Outside, a large group of people were sleeping on the front lawn, but no alarms were ever sounded inside the hotel. I went back to bed, to be awoken regularly during the night by further aftershocks.



"The rest, I suppose is history. It was one of the most damaging earthquakes to hit Turkey in recent years. 17,000 people lost their lives, as badly built appartment blocks came crashing down all over the affected area. The centre of Istanbul itself was not badly affected, but everywhere I looked, I could see families moving into tents on any spare ground they could find. Later during my visit, I met some people who were personally affected, and that memory will stay with me for a long time.

Flooding

Gosho's account

Texas Floods, Austin, Texas, July 2002

"Holy Moly, what a week. A low pressure system over Florida began to drift westwards - normally they travel from west to east, but this one got caught up in a westerly airflow. When it got as far as south-central Texas it stalled, caught between two high pressure systems, and began drawing moisture in from The Gulf of Mexico.



"I can't remember if it was Friday or Saturday afternoon it began raining here in Austin, but once it did, it seemed as if I didn't stop until yesterday, and indeed it's still raining heavily over the Texas Hill Country to the west of Austin.



"This is truly tropical rainfall - heavy, with little in the way of thunder and lightning, warm, and with almost no wind. It just comes down straight and soaks everything.



"By Monday, the National Weather Service had issued flash flood watches for just about all of south-central Texas, and on Tuesday a particularly strong band of rain, including some thunderstorms hit us all. Watches were upgraded to warnings (a watch means that conditions are good for a severe thunderstorm/flood/tornado to occur, a warning means that it's imminent or is already happening), and flood alerts were issued for all of the local creeks, streams and rivers.



"Local rivers, such as the Blanco, Guadalupe, Llano, San Marcos, and Perdenales rose to well over their flood stage as some areas received as much as 17" of rain in 36 hours. Many local farmers lost livestock which were cut off and drowned. In Austin we got 4" in three hours, and 6.5" in a 24 hour period to 6pm on Tuesday (average July rainfall *total* for Austin is a little over 3"!).



"The store where I work is very close to a stream called Shoal Creek which, for most of the year is almost bone dry, but at times like this it becomes a raging torrent and can easily overflow its banks, as it did last November, flooding our store to a depth of about a foot, and stores closer to three or four feet. Luckily, we got away with it this time - Shoal Creek just crested over its banks but didn't flood anywhere.



"This area of Texas is known as the flash flood capital of America because of the limestone geology. There's very little soil to soak up any rainfall, and although there are plenty of cracks and fissures in limestone which water can seep through, the kind of rainfall we've seen this week simply overwhelms it and there is excessive run-off, flooding streams, creeks, and rivers.



"As I write, the rivers I named earlier are either at or well above their flood stage and major flooding is occuring. The San Marcos River is a full 10' above flood level. Many counties to the west are still under a flash flood warning after having seen hourly rainfall rates this morning of 3"-4" an hour, and now *we're* under a flood warning because most of those rivers drain this way into the Colorado River.



"The weird thing is, even though we've wiped almost 8" of the 10" rainfall deficit we had for the year, we're still officially in a moderate drought..."

Wildfires

Dragonfly's experience

Hayman Fire, Colorado, June 2002

"I'm about, or have been, about 20 miles from the Hayman fire in Colorado. The other day I counted nine shopping carts(trolleys, you might call them) FULL of donations for the firefighters. Gatorade sports drinks, bags of chips, bottles of water, etc. Pretty cool.



"I first learned of the fire at work. I'm employed at a Wal*Mart Supercenter, and work in the bakery. We smelled smoke-- a lot like a campfire or a bbq back in the bakery department. We tried to figure out where it came from. Walking to the front of the store we saw the smoke lying out beyond the parking lot, resembling fog. The smoke scent had entered the bakery department because of the vents over our ovens. It was REALLY gross...



"A lot of people with breathing problems have had to stay indoors or even relocate.



"That same day (the second day of the fire), I found ash on my car and others. Enough to make the windshield icky.



"Currently, the number one fire in Colorado is not the one I'm talking about. However, the Hayman Fire is threatening Monument, which is RIGHT NEXT to Colorado Springs, where my Aunt, Uncle, and cousin live.



"After the first few days of the fire, the sky really started to return to its predominant blue, and it was not until yesterday that I could smell the fire again. The fire is now shifting to the south, away from me. The northern Command Center is in Castle Rock, which is the town neighboring mine.



"What is most interesting to me regarding this experience is the sun. It has been an unearthly bright orangey-red. I first noticed it, not by looking up, but by casting my gaze on the sidewalk!!!! The sidewalk, windows and cars catching the sun's reflection have had an orange glow to them!!! Paranormal, almost. And it's terribly hard to look straight at the sun, too. Dad's reported sunsets that are backward, with blue on the edge of the horizon and the yellows, reds, and oranges higher up!!!"