The biggest snowstorm I was in dumped 38" of snow on us overnight.
The strongest hurricane I experienced clocked 98mph winds.
The largest hail I ever saw come down was baseball size.
The largest earthquake I experienced registered 7.5 on the Richter scale.
Being from Florida, I’ve obviously been through a lot of hurricanes. To name a few Andrew (Cat 5) hit just to the south of me on the east coast. Charley (Cat 4) hit just to the north of me coming across the state from the west coast. Hurricane Wilma (Cat 4) went right over me, but hit the west coast first. Hurricane Irma (Cat 5) went over me, but slightly to the west. Hurricane Katrina (Cat 5) passed directly over me as it was strengthening. At the time I think it was only a Cat 1. Hurricane Ivan (Cat 4) went over me, but first hit the west coast and weakened. With hurricanes obviously you get tornado, floods, windstorms, thunderstorms, and sometimes localized fires with them… Nothing much has really happened to me through the worst of the worst storms. I’ve always lived in quality built homes. I’ve had a few trees down here and there that I had to chop up. During Wilma I stayed over at my parents house and their garage door nearly got ripped off in the eye wall. My Dad and I were out in the garage during the storm. I was standing on the door to weight it down while he put wires and chains on it. It kept picking me up like 5 in the air with gusts… The garage door is like a giant wing… It was like a roller coaster ride. Hahaha. We got it chained down eventually and nothing else happened to the house. During that storm though a tornado hit like a mile away and knocked down a bunch of buildings.
I'm glad you didn't blow away!!! I'd have let the door go. 😳
The wildlife there scares me more than the storms. 😂
We had a vacation house there when I was a kid and there was an alligator in our yard. Eew!!!
Alligators are no big deal. They will pretty much always run away from you unless they are trapped or it's a mother guarding her nest. As soon as they see you they scatter into the closet body of water generally. I once had a mama alligator like 2 or 3 feet away from me while I was canoeing a river. I had to get out of the canoe and drag it over a fallen tree that she decided was a great place to make her nest near. She ran to the water, but had her head sticking out of the water and was hissing at me. I could see she was panicking... Anyway, got my canoe over the log and back in my canoe and moved on. If you respect them, they will generally respect you.
Too much wildlife for me!!! 😂
No. I live in a small town on the beach. The worst we get are mosquitos and sharks.
That's pretty much what it's like most of the time in Florida. I currently live on rural agricultural acreage several miles from the Atlantic ocean. Even with a lot of wilderness and preserve land around, in the past two years I've seen a couple raccoon, tons of rabbits, squirrels, and opossum the occasional north American racer or eastern rat snake both of which are non venomous, hawks, eagles, and ospreys, tons of different garden birds and wading birds, a handful of deer, tortoises, etc. The bigger predator animals need a lot of habitat so they tend to stay away from humans for the most part. Even with hundreds of thousands of acres of wilderness somewhat close by they don't make their way around where I live, work, and play on a regular basis. You really have to be out in the woods backpacking to encounter them. I have before but it's not an everyday thing.
That sounds really nice actually! I could live with those things.
5 foot snow deep blizzard
1 tornado
Lots of floods, thunderstorms, hailstorms
Just missed a sink hole be only a few feet. The ground opened up right after we drove over it
Those sink holes are creepy! I once saw the start of one. It looked surreal.
Yeah, if we were one second slower we would have been caught in it
Talk about cheating death.
The hole took up the width of the street
Did you stop to take pictures or hit the gas?
Did not even notice right away. All the cars behind us just disappeared. That's when I looked back.
Take pictures, This happen years before digital cameras
So no pictures I think I was about 18 or 20 when that happened
Im from Alabama so I've been through many tornados. When I was in middle school a tornado destroyed the junior high school. And when I was away at university, my hometown went through a really bad tornado (thank God ny family was ok) and I was 2 1/2 hours away from home so I couldn't go back home until they had the roads cleared. The next year, I went home for spring break and my university was basically damaged due to a tornado. It was so bad the apartments, dorms, academic buildings, and the whole small town was basically in ruins.
Recently we had a tornado nearby where I'm from and it knocked down the poles and a few buildings and homes were destroyed. But luckily everyone is alright.
We also get a lot of thunderstorms, flooding, and hail
I'm glad your family was ok! Those tornados are frightening.
I have never been true something that deytroyed my home fortunately. That beeing said I was close to that with a thunderstorm that fried a powerline near our house and the fire had to be put out by the fire department, my neighbors cellar and groundfloor got flooded and had to be pumped empty (we lived not much higher but it made the difference. Also we had storms that uprooted trees luckily never into our house. My parents did need a new windshield for their car because of a hail it even was parked inside a carport but the wind made the hail hit anyway.
Drought only hit us with rising water price and burning our lawn.
Except the thunderstrm everything in the last five years Maybe even less.
Oh yes, that hail can do some damage!
Opinion
33Opinion
A few weeks after the 1989 earthquake, I went to San Francisco and saw the aftermath. It was nasty.
I was in the L. A. area during the Northridge earthquake of 1994. I felt it but it didn't effect me much.
Growing up in Southern California, I've felt lots of earthquakes but was never in any danger.
I drove an hour to see the aftermath of the Camp Fire in the town of Paradise, Ca in 2018. I used to go there all the time for work. The whole place was gone.
I'm glad that I never lived where there are blizzards, floods, forest fires, tornadoes or hurricanes. I'll take the rare strong earthquake.
I never minded the earthquakes much until the Loma Prieta. After that one, I was a little panicky when an earthquake hit.
The only one that comes to mind is Hurricane Sandy. Really bad storm! I'll never forget that and neither will my girls. Out of power for 12 days. My girls were mostly just bored after the storm passed. I had a heavy tree limb fall on my fence from next door. Trees were pulled up from the roots, and laid across lawns all around the town. It wasn't until we found out that the library had a generator where computers could be used, that we could at least do something besides reading.
Yay for the library!
Yes. My region has been it by two floods in the last year and a whole part of my town is still underwater.
Last summer a fire broke out near my home and burned half mountainside. Thankfully no one got hurt and my property was not touched.
I'm sorry to hear about your community!
In 1989 I had just been transferred to the Navy Schools Command on Mare Island, Vallejo, California. I was living in a Navy Lodge in Alameda and commuted daily both ways between the two places, travelling the two level highway that collapsed and crushed so many. After a few days I obtained military housing in Novato, just north of San Francisco, and moved there. Then the earth quake hit and did all that damage. I considered myself very lucky that I had gotten into housing just in time!
That is VERY lucky. That was also a mean commute!
Snowstorms: the Blizzard of '78 and the Blizzard of 2013, both in Virginia.
Hurricanes Hugo and Andrew, the former in Connecticut and the latter in Florida.
Several earthquakes on Guam and in California.
Super Typhoon Pongsona while on Guam with gust up to 183mph.
That's quite the typhoon! What kind of shelter were you in?
I asked this question because we had a storm last night and I woke up in the dark to the all-to-familiar sound of a tree snapping. One storm, we lost 8 trees on or property and those winds were gusts of maybe 75mph? I can't imagine 183mph.
WOW! That's amazing. Sorry about the trees.
Here are some more pictures. They're not mine, but the damage was pretty amazing:
And this one is a pdf. But go to the second page. The picture there is Super Typhoon Pongsona. Those poles are concrete. Snapped. www.pacificarea.uscg.mil/.../...20Inforgraphic.pdf
Whoa! I've seen trees look like that, but never concrete from wind.
The biggest snowstorm I was in dumped 30 inches overnight. I was at a mountain resort area but I couldn't do anything in that amount of snow, so I dug myself out and came back home.
Where were you when you were in an earthquake that was 7.5? That is BIG!
California 1989
That's a lot of snow. I'm surprised you could get out.
@TrueConfection OK I remember the 1989 California earthquake! There was a freeway that collapsed onto another freeway in the Bay Area.
That snow storm.. It was still coming down as I was digging out which made it harder. If I recall, it took 4 hours to get out and there were other people contributing to clearing a path to the street. I remember the boots that I was wearing weren't as waterproof as I though and my feet were "squishing". It was an awful experience. LOL
Sounds about right! You must have had 4 wheel drive? The snowstorm I was in came down so fast that the plows couldn't plow fast enough. By the time it stopped snowing, there was no where to put the snow.
I've actually been stranded in a few of them. I was stuck in D. C. in '94? during a storm and Clinton had shut the government down. Zero plows.
@TrueConfection No I didn't have a 4 wheel drive. It would have been easier if I did. I was in a motel parking lot and it had snowed all that overnight and the parking lot was an ocean of snow. I remember after an hour of digging, I went across the street to a restaurant to get breakfast. I was wearing a hat covered with ice and snow and I had those squishy boots. Some guy in a booth next to me wanted me to get up out from my table so he could use my table to push up again the booth he was in so more of his friends could join him. He wasn't catching on that I wasn't in the greatest of moods at the moment and his friends told him to shut up. I think they were afraid that I was going to go Clint Eastwood on his ass... LOL!
Squishy boots! Yeah, I'll bet you weren't amused. He should have just bought you a coffee.
He was poor at picking up social cues... LOL
Been through a few tornados one small earthquake and 3 flood two of those were 500 years floods one in des moines Iowa 1993 and the other one was in washington state. I moved to washington state the year mt. St. Helens blew up but only got to see the aftermath
Oh man, Mt. St. Helens? I'm glad you arrived after.
I grew up in the Northeast. Blizzards and snowstorms happened often, we learned to survive them. Worst disaster was an ice storm that caused 100s of thousands of people to be without power for days, in some cases, weeks. Our house had no power for 7 days... you learn to help your neighbors.
I think I remember that ice storm. 2007 or 8? I saw it in the news. The power lines were frozen and snapping.
I lived through the legendary Blizzard of 1978. I can remember that no cars were allowed on the road. My mother sent my brother and me up town to buy groceries. We towed a toboggan and bought all kinds of stuff at the supermarket. We got the whole week off from school. My father stayed home from work. At a few coastal towns there were houses that were washed off their foundations and ended up on the next street.
Holy smokes! I'll bet the kids were happy to get a week off school.
Upstate Ny ice storm of 1998.
& When I lived in Anchorage Ak, 2018. Huge ass earthquake.
I'm used to snowstorms and ice storms, but I've never experienced earthquakes until i moved to Alaska.
Upstate NY and Alaska... You must like the cold! I'm glad you're ok after those!
Tornadoes, thunderstorms, windstorms, snowstorms, earthquakes, droughts and one cyclone.
None of them were terribly disastrous for my experience though. The cyclone isn’t done yet. We shall see.
Yikes! I hope it goes well for you and not the cyclone!
Thankfully no but I've witnessed the aftermath of tornadoes and hurricanes. Hurricane Katrina was long and hot 🤦♀️
Yes, I remember Katrina. I was living in California and watching the footage. It was heartbreaking to see people stranded on the roofs of their houses and no help.
We didn't have anything like that here. I mean if we did i didn't know because i was only like 9 years old. I just recall all of us who had no generator having to burn up in the dark no a/c house at night. We’d lay on the hood of cars in nothing but undergarments trying to cool off. And then the swarm of mosquitos would attack.
Oooo!! Cringe!!! 😬
Yea we used to live in this beautiful house and the huge tree in the yard fell backwards onto one of the bedrooms in our house. This was when katrina was just working itself up with all the winds. So we had to go stay with a cousin during the hurricane and thats where all the above with the mosquitos and stuff happened
I'm glad you're okay!
Same. But living with my cousin was awful! She didn't care that i had bad asthma as a kid (I've outgrown it), and she and her boyfriend would smoke cigarettes and other shit 24/7 and she’d tel my family to just deal with it because we were guests in her house. But my mom never treated her and her son like that when they had to temporarily stay with us
I try to be forgiving of smokers (I absolutely cannot tolerate cigarette smoke). It just seems like their bodies are so addicted that they lose all ability to reason.
Flooding in our country, and ironically drought in the same area, and Earthquake happen all the time. Luckily the earth quakes in my city are mild. Otherwise my house which is 80 years old would be crumbled
Must have a good foundation!
When I used to live in Texas I dealt with a lot of hurricanes.
Near the gulf then?
Houston closer to Galveston Texas. It's a beach not a nice beach.
I’m afraid to answer this at the moment. It’s not a good year. 😬
Oh no! I hope it gets better for you.
Thanks. Just playing it safe.
I cleaned after several large floods it's not very pleasant thing. To clean up. People's lives are in turmoil they feel there is no hope. And they have nowhere to turn for assistance.
Yes, it's devastating. That was nice of you to help with cleanup.
The first one was the Teton dam disaster in Idaho in 1976. The other one was in 19 90s and 2000 time frame here in Kansas. The rivers were overflowing here.
The Teton Dam failure was huge! Did you live there?
I was working in Salt Lake City at the time. I had just finished college. I had grown up in Twin Falls. Titanis were east and north of Idaho Falls.
Dinosaurs? I'm not familiar with Idaho.
Been through an Earth Quake and a Fire. North Ridge quake happened when I was visiting my grandparents in San Bernardino and the Witch Creek fire in North San Diego.
That was a big earthquake.
I remember that! I was too far north to feel it, but it made me nervous.
A few blizzards, most recently the one that created havoc all over the NE and central US and a few Earthquakes in CA.
I hope you weren't traveling during that last NE blizzard.
Nope. I was at home making glazed ham for Christmas dinner.
😋👍👍
I’ve been in Tons of Heavy Thunderstorms, Blizzard and Drove during a tornado forming.
I feel like tornados are the scariest.
Right! My mother was hiking Pikes Peak and was caught in a thunderstorm. She said she could feel the buzzing.
Tornado. An F5 took out most of the town i was living in at the time.
Andrew?
No. A little town called Greensburg.
I was thinking Hurricane Andrew.
Did your home survive?
No just the foundation. Most of the town was destroyed. It's rebuilt now though.
I'm sorry.
Earthquake, Windstorm, Forest fire, Hurricane, Snowstorm, Thunderstorm, Hailstorm
You experienced 7.5 quake and survived? Where were you?
I was in California for the '89 earthquake.
*whoa*🤯were you at home? How bad was it?
I was at home. I was close to the epicenter, so it wasn't as bad as the Bay Area. The ground split, the building next door was swaying toward my house and the neighbor thought it was going to hit. Power lines fell, people fell, I fell, the lamps fell as did the pictures hanging on the walls. A few car accidents happened. No one died where I was, but the ER was overflowing.
Several earthquakes but none of them really affected me.
Glad to hear it!
I've been through tornados, hurricanes, floods, and forest fires.
Forest fires are bad. I was in LA when the mountains were on fire. It looked like it was snowing because of all the ash. We had to cover our faces.
I have been through a similar experience, it was surreal.
Nothing but earth quakes lol but it wasn't a disaster
That's good! I used to think earthquakes were fun until I experienced a big one.
Where I’m from the only one I have ever been through was a earthquake
Hopefully it wasn't huge?
The ones I’ve felt weren’t but the ones I’ve heard about were very huge
That's good!
Well I live in New York so we get blizzards every year and we also got hurricane Sandy
How is it so far this winter? You had a major storm at Christmas, right?
Yes but that was it. It's just hella cold
Our home was flooded, large area of flooding, 23 died
I hope you were able to save your home!
We lost a lot, some lost everything, we did get to rebuild thankfully
That's difficult. I'm glad you were able to rebuild.
Me too, I retired a little early because of it
13 inches of snow closed our (Firestone) one day
That's a lot of snow!
Earthquake, bush fires and floods.
Landslides too?
I actually haven't.
Very fortunate!
Well I live in Denmark... nothing happens around here natural disaster wise
Earthquake but it wasn't a disaster
That's good to hear!
I've been through 2 bad hurricanes and 2 blizzards
Those blizzards! We had love knock our power AND our road out for a week. The neighbors got together in one house to stay warm and we all pooled our food together.
There were cars stranded on major roads all over the place for weeks during the Last blizzard we had. I was driving in it and I was the only vehicle on the road. It usually took 45 minutes to get home. That night it took almost three hours to get home.
Yikes! That's scary driving.
It was white knuckle driving but I had a 4wd truck and I took it slow and steady.
Did you have to pull anyone else out?
That night nobody else was on the road. It was just me in basically a whiteout. When it stopped I helped neighbors pull their cars out.
That was kind! I'll bet they still remember you helping them.
That's how we are in my neighborhood. We all look out for each other and help each other.
Nice! ❤
Fort Worth F5 tornado. Early 00s I think…
Were you in a bunker?
I've never been through a tornado, but it seems everyone mentions the sky turning from day to night. How did you know where to go?
Tornado. Lost everything
I'm sorry. Was it recent?
Ok, so not too recent. Not that it's something a person can forget.
No avalanche or tsunami. All the rest yes
Lots of hurricanes, I bet!
Charlie, have you witnessed a volcano eruption? That would be spectacular and frightening at the same time!
Yes hurricanes are normal occurrences here. Mt etna erupted but it does often and it was quite tame
Ok, tame is good!
Oh and I forgot about eruption in Hawaii! Also tame but awesome
That's a nice place to be during an eruption. 😎
And I took a boat out to see where the lava was dumping into the ocean
I love Hawaii
I have never been there. It looks beautiful. What's your favorite island?
So far the big island because there are so many open places to roam and explore and hike and get away from civilization. Volcano national park and mt Maunakea
And ranches and beaches galore. Green sand beach and black sand beaches that are soft… lol don’t get me started
Mmmmm 😎
tornado 65, flood 78, and 82, snow storm 78
I've never had to deal with a tornado myself. One of my kids had to while away from home. We were on the phone together and I could hear the sirens. It was maddening.
No, never
Fortunate!
Not even snowstorms?
Ice storms 3 of y
Brrr! What was the longest you were without power?
Flood, Quack
🦆🦆🦆🦆
Quake 😂
Quack job is me 😂 and you are @TrueConfection sweet as always
Snow ❄️ storm, thunder ⛈️ storm. Get to see from distance
😇 A snowstorm from a distance and someplace warm isn't too bad.
Hangover
I'll allow it. 😂
It certainly can be a disaster.
You can also add your opinion below!
Holidays 
Girl's Behavior 
Guy's Behavior 
Flirting 
Dating 
Relationships 
Fashion & Beauty 
Health & Fitness 
Marriage & Weddings 
Shopping & Gifts 
Technology & Internet 
Break Up & Divorce 
Education & Career 
Entertainment & Arts 
Family & Friends 
Food & Beverage 
Hobbies & Leisure 
Other 
Religion & Spirituality 
Society & Politics 
Sports 
Travel 
Trending & News 
Most Helpful Opinions