Worst thunderstorm you have ever been in

[Gary M]

Was on Hemlock lake in March, it was unusually warm and had my two young daughters with me, maybe 7 and 5.

 

Sky got dark, thunder started to roll, we beached the boat and huddled under a large pine bow. Then the hail started.The girls were scared, but my oldest was worried about the boat.

 

Lasted about half an hour.

 

 

[Royale with Cheese]

Does anyone remember this?  3 kids inside this about 500 feet in the air.

 

[RaoulDuke79]

September of last year we had the worst hail storm I've ever witnessed. I'm in southern Pennsylvania so this is fairly uncommon. I have video but don't know how to upload it. The kick in the pants is we put a new roof on the previous year, and nearly everyone in the development got a new roof for the price of a deductible. 

Edited June 22, 2018 by RaoulDuke79

[Golden Goat]

So strange to see this post today. Ours was yesterday. The storms came out of nowhere and lightning hit a metal bench in the landscaping in front of our house. The force threw the bench against the house, but miraculously none of the windows broke. The cable modem, router and two satellite boxes were fried (despite surge protectors) and -- well, let's just say it was an unfortunate introduction to thunder for my 1-year-old.

[yall]

Clayton, NY 1995. Microburst rolled through. Tore trees apart and the lightning was so intense that it looked almost like daylight at 3AM. It looked more akin to someone occasionally flipping a light switch off intermittently than it did flashes of light. 

 

I doubt I'll ever experience anything like that again.

Edited June 22, 2018 by yall
Correction on date

[RochesterRob]

4 hours ago, RaoulDuke79 said:

September of last year we had the worst hail storm I've ever witnessed. I'm in southern Pennsylvania so this is fairly uncommon. I have video but don't know how to upload it. The kick in the pants is we put a new roof on the previous year, and nearly everyone in the development got a new roof for the price of a deductible. 

  We had softball sized hail (at the large end) last May but thanks to a heavy tree/shrub line on the west side of the house my home was spared any damage.  What scared me was the cat was outside under the pickup and got frightened by the noise from hail banging onto metal so she ran out into the hail.  A miracle that she was not killed.  In fact she suffered no injuries.  Thankfully.

[RaoulDuke79]

11 minutes ago, RochesterRob said:

  We had softball sized hail (at the large end) last May but thanks to a heavy tree/shrub line on the west side of the house my home was spared any damage.  What scared me was the cat was outside under the pickup and got frightened by the noise from hail banging onto metal so she ran out into the hail.  A miracle that she was not killed.  In fact she suffered no injuries.  Thankfully.

I would  have fired my cat right out the door in that scenario. He's an ungrateful miserable bastard. 

[TigerJ]

I was participating in a church camp for fathers and sons, with my son, who was 7 at the time.  We were camping at a water only access campground at the Kinzua Reservoir near Warren, PA.  We were on a canoe excursion, heading back to our camp site, when a thunderstorm blew in very quickly.  We are on the water in aluminum canoes.  The wind came up quickly and blew directly against us.  It was so strong that it kept turning the canoes around so we couldn't go back to our campground.  Lightning was frequent and the thunder indicated the strikes were pretty close.  My son asked me in tears, "Are we gonna die, Dad?"  We did the only thing we could, canoe to the shore of the reservoir, pull the canoes on shore and wait out the storm under a tree.  I know when you're in a field, under an isolated tree is the last place you want to be, but when you're in a national forest and there are trees all around, you don't have much choice.  One tree is no more likely than a million others to be struck.  In a forest, the place you don't want to be in a thunderstorm is on a hill top.  Lightning strikes are much more frequent at topographical high points.

 

I saw a tornado when I was a kid, but apparently it was near the point of dissipating.  On the radio the next day, it was reported there were other sightings, but no reports of damage.  

 

More recently, in our present home, just shy of 8 years ago, we had a lightning strike that apparently hit an electric line close to our home.  The sound was instantaneous after the lightning and sounded like a real loud gun shot.  It triggered a GFI in an electrical circuit in our basement and fried our washing machine.   

[Bob Lamb]

On 6/18/2018 at 8:10 PM, /dev/null said:

Maybe 10 or so years ago I was smoking a cigarette in the entryway to the apartment building I lived in when a thunderstorm rolled thru.  No big deal.

 

Except this time a few feet away from me i see this blue thing starting to rise up from the ground.  Looked almost like a plant or tree sprouting up in slow motion.  Then the loudest thunderclap I have ever heard, the earth felt like it shook, the air around me was full of static, and that blue thing shot straight up into the sky

 

Ball lightning - I saw it once when we lived in St. Louis. It exploded like a giant firework. My mother ran outside - thinking I was dead

[DC Tom]

On 6/22/2018 at 3:05 PM, Soda Popinski said:

Do Hurricanes count?  

 

Charlie/Francis/Ivan/Jeane/Irma/one in 2005 I can't remember the name.   Irma was probably the worst last year it took roof shingles off the house and broke a fence post.   

 

I was also in Marathon FL during hurricane Alberto this year for a day.   50mph sustained winds is not good fishing weather.   

 

EDIT:  I forgot Andrew back in 1992

 

My wife lived through Andrew.  It erased the bank she worked at.  Even the bank vault was gone.

 

Andrew was a hell of a thing.

[Pine Barrens Mafia]

When I was in basic training at fort sill, Oklahoma in late spring/early summer, we had a HELL of a storm blow through. As an east coast guy I’ve never seen anything like it and don’t think I ever will. Scary ****.