What's the most significant weather event you've experienced?

I thought it would be fun to pose a question to the community. The topic question and poll question are different, so make sure to answer both!

I'll start. In July 2013, I was out camping. This was back when I still went camping because I was 13 and did whatever my family did. One night, there was such a severe thunderstorm that not only did it wake all of us up (except for the dog, who we think was slightly deaf), it was so loud that we could barely hear each other yelling INSIDE the tent. That's how loud the rain and wind and thunder were. There was a very real possibility that a tree could fall down near us or on us. We all huddled together in the tent until it was over, which was about an hour. When we woke up the next morning, our tent had been ripped in several places by the savage winds, and we were unable to use it again after that trip. Trees did fall down in other areas close to us, so we were lucky to avoid that.

At the time, my sister and a friend were sleeping in a little one-person tent, and that held up against the storm significantly better than our big tent! Go figure. My camera at the time, a red Nikon COOLPIX L26, also survived the storm by being in a case in a high pocket of the tent — not that I took any video during it, because it would have gotten instantly soaked.

Weather in the Isle Of Man is generally pretty boring, it's always cold and rainy but never cold enough to snow. That being said, there are a few interesting things that have happened - I have seen multiple thunderstorms including one in Early-Mid 2021 that broke my headphones while they were charging. There has also been storms - the most significant in February 2017 which blew the top of the shed and the fence off... other than those things there hasn't been much else I can remember

One weather event that I remember finding wacky was a heavy snowing incident we had last year in April. It was sudden and the snow itself only lasted a day or two, but the accumulated snow layer was so thick (thicker than the snow layers that we had/usually have in the Winter) that some Trees had their branches ripped and some schools in my county/region had to close for the day.
Weird stuff.

Can't really say this is a particularly [i[significant[/i] experience in the weather itself, but I've had the pleasure of running out into obscene winds and medium-strength rain in shorts and a sleeveless shirt. Frolicked for a while in the chaos. So much fun. Very wet.

Look up the San Francisco Bay Area on 9 September 2020. Enough said.

Look up the New York City Manhattan Area on 11 September 2001. Enough said.

I guess there was one time that we got like 2-3 feet of snow, but that's about it from what I can remember, at least what from I actually experienced.
However, one time, when we were renovating a house we had just moved out of, there was a huge flood and the whole basement got flooded, plus maybe 3-5 feet of the bottom floor. We weren't living there at the time, but my dad would drag me along there all the time while he worked on the house.
Other than that, Hurricane Sandy also destroyed a large part of a boardwalk me and my mom basically always go to during the summer (Seaside Heights). We still went after it came through, and it was pretty barren, but it was also kinda cool to see the huge empty expanse of new boardwalk that had just been rebuilt.

subtract wrote:

I have seen multiple thunderstorms including one in Early-Mid 2021 that broke my headphones while they were charging.

Wow, I didn't even know that was possible! That sounds dangerous, but still exciting if you're into that. Does it get warm and/or sunny in the summer at all?

Connie post=246369 userid=18397
One weather event that I remember finding wacky was a heavy snowing incident we had last year in April. It was sudden and the snow itself only lasted a day or two

Late winter/early spring snowstorms can happen here as well. The craziest one of those was in March 2017. We got almost a meter of snow, and some places in the area got even more!

 

@Nockess: That sounds like so much fun, at least if it's not too cold! I like hearing about stuff like that too, even if it's not specific events. For me, there have been times in the spring or fall, when it's the morning and high humidity and the temperature is about 45°F (7°C) and I can smell mud in the air, where I'm hit by a powerful wave of nostalgia due to the weather conditions. I think it's because I associate those conditions with memories of being outside in pre-K and kindergarten. The yard at that school always smelled like damp earth on spring mornings, and I loved it so much.

@Eguy: For stuff like this, I absolutely love the website Ventusky ! It is sort of like Windy.com but maybe even better, because it lets you look at historical weather on a map of the world all the way back to June 1979! Plugging in 2020-09-09 and looking at the Bay Area, it looks like it was really hot and the air quality was really bad into the next day — did you get a wildfire? I hope it wasn't too traumatic.

@Yoshicraft: My basement "floods" every spring from snowmelt, but not nearly as much as that — only a few inches, since we have a pump to keep it under control. Your boardwalk anecdote reminds me of July 2017 when the river got so high that the closest boardwalk was actually under a few inches of water. It was so fun to go down there and see it! Hurricane Sandy was bad near NYC. I can't even imagine seeing so much stuff destroyed from flooding, although apparently that happened not too far from me just last year.

There have been quite a few experiences with crazy weather, when photoshooting in wild terrain far away from home. But I think this one absolutely tops it, because I was genuinely caught off-guard and had to do some desperate measures to protect myself.

July 31st, 2021. This is the date when me and some dudes, who joined me later on were out to a region of our national parks in Slovakia. We went with an early train, arrived at the place, went by myself first on the road to a specific spot, which is literally on the edge of a forest. Waiting, doing some test photos of how I'd imagine the result of it, the weather has made a loud and clear statement, it will thunderstorm. Me, with literally no waterproof jacket, no umbrella even, with regular summer clothing, I knew I was getting absolutely whooped, and it immediately started storming, just hiding below some trees, getting soaked, hoping my camera doesn't get killed in the process. However, it was warm, so it wasn't cold by any means. But it was showering literally. When the first train appeared, ran out, snapped it with my camera, ran back. Met some dudes from the railway community later, who were clearly in the same situation as I was. Our subject train finally arrived, we made fabulous photos of it, ran back and waited until our return train arrived, it finally stopped raining at that moment and we got back home.

Moral of the story: Always check weather before you go out for an expedition. 
Down below I've provided what I've caught during the process.

Sounds like it was totally worth it to get that picture. I love the dreary atmosphere, it must have been so cool to be in the train during that storm! And I'm glad your camera was okay. I often value my camera more than anything else I own when I go places, since often the #1 reason I go places is so that I can take pictures.

Unfortunately it looks like this website compresses pictures quite a lot. I guess we'll have to make do with it though.

That's actually amazing. I'll definitely be using that website for nostalgia purposes at some point.

That day I mentioned has its own wikipedia entry. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orange_Skies_Day
the TL;DR is that we had massive and deadly wildfires in the northeast of the state from late august-early september and smoke blew over towards the Bay Area and made the sky dark orange. 12 PM looked like about 7 or 8 PM. Eventually rain came and put out the fires but it was a long and tiring month's worth of the outdoors smelling like a constant BBQ

That's super cool creep, I wish I lived in a place that gets summer rain/thunderstorms