Really Good Storm Pictures/vids/stories??

[LordRaiden]

Who's got some really good pics of severe wheather? I'm a huge severe weather buff and I was curious what the rest of you had. Also, what about videos? Any good ones you have? I've got quite a few myself, just none I can post right now. (they're buried in my 80k image collection) If you guys got any, post them. Also, if you got any good stories of storms or strong weather that you want to tell, please feel free to share. In leu of pictures, I'll share a storm chasing experience from before the urge of self preservation kicked in.

We were down in norther Texas in early 1994 (Mid may, but I don't remember the date specifically) following a very strong storm across some open fields when the storm started to spin very rapidly (no twister. I'm talking the whole cloud itself started to spin) creating a very wide circular rain band that obscured the center of the cloud. I was with the south team (I was helping a friend for several weeks doing some storm chasing that year) trying to get good video of the storm but got a tad too close. We got caught in the rain wall and because it was raining so much we couldn't see anything. I stepped out to see if I could get our bearings so we knew which way to go to put some distance between us and the storm. Just about then the rain stopped, just as if someone flipped a switch it just stopped. Stairing at me about 1/4 mile off was about an F2 tornado. After about a good 2 minutes it had moved off and the rain returned. I then got back into the van, and the group of us headed back to the hotel to change our underwear.

How about you guys, any stories you want to share? Pics? Vids?

 

[loup garou]

Driving back to New Orleans from Santa Fe, we got caught in an ice storm around Amarillo. It was so bad that so much ice accumulated on my father's suburban that the weight of it (plus our cargo and passengers) made the trailer hitch drag on the road! We had to stop for the evening and had to slam into the doors to open them (had to crack the ice that had formed over them).

I've never seen weather like that before...

I also have tons of hurricane stories, growing up in New Orleans.

 

[ThaGrandCow]

This one time, I was working at a Dish Network call center, and stoopid tropical storm bob fried what seemed like every single sattelite users reciever or LNBF. That day sucked for me. Oh yeah that was just a few days ago. Then tropical storm claudette came through and all the ones that wern't fried before got fried.

Scuba steve... damn you!

 

I posted this in a thread titled "mmm summer" about two months ago - good read:

Originally posted by: jumpr
Long read, but definitely worth it:

When I lived in Alabama (for a year), my family and the house we were renting at the time were victims of the infamous Palm Sunday tornado outbreak (March 27, 1994).

It was almost dinner time and my family was just about to sit down to a meal of brisket and potatoes - one of my favorites. We were all sitting in the family room watching Jerry Tracey (the NBC weatherman), and he said that the strong storms wouldn't pose much of a problem for the metro-Birmingham area. Having lived in Alabama for about 8 months at the time, we were pretty used to strong thunderstorms, and hail was even somewhat normal.

It had been thundering and raining for a while, and we were just about to eat when Jerry came on the screen again and said that a tornado warning had been issued for Jefferson County (we lived in Mountain Brook, in Jefferson County). Almost at that exact instant, we all turned our heads to view an amazing sight outside: golfball sized hail was blowing into our French doors at 90 degree angles. The hailstones were literally flying at 30-40 m.p.h. at our windows, and we knew it was time to get into the basement.

We went downstairs to the garage (there was no basement, only a garage under the house) and into the storage room, which was reinforced on one side with our front yard - basically it was an underground room). My dad remembered once we got down there that he forgot flashlights, so he ran back upstairs to get some. My sister and I were screaming for him to come back downstairs, as we could see through the garage door windows that branches were being ripped from trees and rain was flying in all directions.

Finally, we saw the door to the house open up and my dad came into view. It sounded like he slammed the door on the way down, but he maintains to this day that he only shut it lightly. Either way, my sister and I heard a bang and a crack as my dad came down the stairs.

When we came upstairs after the storm had subsided, we found out what the slamming of the door really was. Our house, as we had known it, was destroyed. The wind (probably a tornado) had uprooted a tree and thrown it onto the roof of our house. The tree smashed our chimney, and the bricks from the chimney had fallen onto our deck. The deck was destroyed - the floor of the deck was laying on the ground under numerous large branches and about 2 tons of bricks. The tree had cracked the beams in our great room (we had a vaulted ceiling, and the cracks in the beams were quite noticeable). There was also a large chunk of drywall that had collapsed from the wall, and it was lying on the couch where my entire family had been sitting only moments before.

We spent the night at the front of our house in the living room (we weren't sure if the back was safe to be in). During the night, the tree slid off the roof, and we all ran out of the house screaming, instantly awake, because it sounded like the entire house was collapsing. We stayed in a hotel for the next few days, but the lessor refused to fix the house (we ended up taking him to court because of it and won damages). We lived in that unsafe atmosphere (with absolutely NOTHING fixed) for the next four months. We moved all our furniture to the 'safe' part of the great room for the remainder of our stay in the house.

I was terrified of thunderstorms for a long, long time, but I've finally gotten over my fear (I was 9 then, and I'm 18 now). Still, whenever I hear about a tornado or a strong storm, or I see hail, I feel that twinge of pain. It's permanently scarred me, and I'll never forget March 27, 1994.

My family has pics of it somewhere, and I'll post them when I can find them. But it's been a while, and they're probably somewhere buried under lots of stuff.

EDIT: here's a link to a meteorological analysis of the storms: Text

 

[LordRaiden]

Ouch. I remember those storms. That was some freaky sh*t that happened that day. Glad everyone was alright.

 

[JimmyEatWorld]

In 1998 I believe it was, I was at a Kroger's grocery store accross the street from a large and new shopping mall named Firt Colony in Sugar Land, Texas (suburb of Houston). The clouds overheard were dark and ominous and T-storms were in the area, but my brother and I didn't think too much of it, but as my mom went into the store we stayed outside just to watch. Well I was looking off into the distance, but my brother points right above us and notices that the cloud is kind of swirling. So we watch this cloud pass over us, creeeeepy, and then it crosses over a field towards the mall. When it reached the parking lot it touched down. As far as tornados go it was the mildest of the mild, but we watched it destroy a little substation adjacent to the mall, sparks everywhere, then it made towards the mall and ripped off an entire side of a two-story dillards. apparently the wall went all the way to above the roof, so the winds just caught that lip and ripped it from the structure. It was exhilerating.

 

[GtPrOjEcTX]

Originally posted by: JimmyEatWorld
In 1998 I believe it was, I was at a Kroger's grocery store accross the street from a large and new shopping mall named Firt Colony in Sugar Land, Texas (suburb of Houston). The clouds overheard were dark and ominous and T-storms were in the area, but my brother and I didn't think too much of it, but as my mom went into the store we stayed outside just to watch. Well I was looking off into the distance, but my brother points right above us and notices that the cloud is kind of swirling. So we watch this cloud pass over us, creeeeepy, and then it crosses over a field towards the mall. When it reached the parking lot it touched down. As far as tornados go it was the mildest of the mild, but we watched it destroy a little substation adjacent to the mall, sparks everywhere, then it made towards the mall and ripped off an entire side of a two-story dillards. apparently the wall went all the way to above the roof, so the winds just caught that lip and ripped it from the structure. It was exhilerating.

That would be awesome to watch.

 

[Schadenfroh]

our security camera recorded lightning striking a tree across the street. that was cool, i have it on a cd somewhere.

 

[dman]

Oct 16,1999 Hurricane Irene came through S.FL. It didn't cause any wind damage to my house but our street was flooded. The water came up our driveway almost to our front door, it was a 2car deep driveway, and my car was parked back towards the street. The water was so deep it got into the car (back seet floor area mostly).

Some idiots tried to drive out in their cars the next day (I guess to survey the damage). They caused wakes which pushed the water up further and one of them ended up stalling halfway around the corner, and they had to get out and walk. I felt it was suitable punishment.

It took most of the day for the water to drain down.

I have pictures (and some crappy video of the storm, as well as some better video of the flooded streets afterwards) but don't have them available at the moment.

 

[Mill]

April 8, 1998

"The tornado track (map of tornado track, size about 236 kb) was approximately 30.6 miles long and at it's widest point was half a mile wide. After first touching down on the east side of the Warrior River in Tuscaloosa County, the tornado crossed into Jefferson County at 7:52 pm moving just south of the town of Scrap, just inside Jefferson County. It traveled east-northeast impacting Oak Grove, Concord, Pleasant Grove, Edgewater, McDonald's Chapel areas before ending in Pratt City. The storm reached it's strongest intensity producing F5 damage in the Concord area and the McDonalds Chapel/Edgewater area."

I lived in Pleasant Grove at the time. We lucked out that it did come farther into the city. The tornado destroyed full brick houses with anchored foundations, as if they were toy tops. It scoured asphalt and ripped grass out of the ground. When the tornado occurred I was at Church. F5 damage occurred approximately 1/2 mile from our church. If you click on the tracking map you will see how the twister's path deviated as it moved throughout the county. Had it not deviated at one point, it would have made a direct hit on our church with 250 people there. Everyone would have died or been seriously injured, because the church was not a very strong structure...

'Interestingly, the tornado was on a trajectory that if it had stayed on the ground for an additional two or three miles the high rises in downtown Birmingham would have been affected; four more miles and the Birmingham Airport would have seen the destruction as well.

The latest death toll with this storm was 32, with more than 250 injuries. More than 1000 homes were destroyed and more than 900 homes with significant damage. This death toll places this tornado as the seventh deadliest tornado in Alabama, moving one ahead of a tornado which produced 31 deaths on March 21 st, 1932."

There used to be a Texaco gas station there, and houses up the hill. It was also covered with a large amount of trees. Not anymore.

Complete devestation

There were Cheerleaders in that gym. Somehow they all survived. The school however was wiped away. Only the Gym remained.

What does an atom bomb look like?

There are more pictures on the first link I gave out at the top of my post.

 

[LordRaiden]

Wow, that's some really awesome pics and stories, and kinda scary too. The weird thing is when you're chasing them you're so pumped on Adrenalin you feel invincible and want to get closer and see more and see the twister get bigger. Afterwords when you see the devistation you just want to be sick. Strange twist in things, no pun intended.

 

[Topher]

Been through an Amazonian rainstorm. My family and I were waiting in the airport at Iquitos, Peru for our flight back to Lima. One minute it was a nice, sunny day, the next it was a downpour that you couldn't even see the planes from the airport lounge windows, then a few minutes later, sunny again. We had to wait about 2 hours until they let flights out again. No pictures or videos, sorry. Never seen anything like it again.

I do have video of the bushfires around Sydney from Christmas 2001. Unfortunately, I don't have a way to move them over from Hi8 to my computer. We lived in the inner suburbs of Sydney (a good ways from the fires) and the sky was completely orange for about a week. I got it on Christmas day, which was the first, so that you can see where the orange sky is taking over the blue. I remember walking to work for the rest of the week with orange sky, and visibility down to about a hundred feet. I had to keep my wife and kids indoors and couldn't open the windows, as my wife and son suffer from asthma, (so far no asthma for my daughter). Being the middle of summer only made it that much worse. Certainly an experience I will never see again. (Mainly, since I no longer live in Australia.)

 

[Electric Amish]

Went camping this last weekend and we had a storm. Wasn't too bad. When we got home I heard on the news that husband/wife got struck by lightning and killed in front of their 3 kids at a lake just a couple of miles from where we were camping.

amish

 

[Vcize]

While this doesn't really classify as "severe" weather, it was definitely very cool looking.

I was at a University of Florida football game this past year...it was evening but there was still some light coming from the sky.

Then this dark dark dark clowd rolled in, only it was VERY low. I was near the top of the stadium and it was not far above me, it looked like it was rolling in at eye level, and I was actually looking at the side of the clowd and could see it's "thickness." Think Independance Day here (the movie), when the ships first break the atmosphere. This clowd looked like one of those ships, very cool.

Needless to say the game got postponed about 2 hours when that clowd finally opened up. Temperatures dropped from mid 80's to mid 60's in a matter of minutes. When the game resumed we all froze, in shorts and t-shirts and soaking wet, but it definitely made a game against a sub-par team very cool. And it definitely had that "storm" feeling before the rain came out (cool, with gusty wind), only magnified by about 20. You just got this feeling that something huge was going to happen.