My former place of residence in Noblesville IN (far north side of Indianapolis), was inundated by flooding in December of 1990. A a sudden massive snowmelt cause by Chinook-like winds and temperatures, exacerbated by unfrigginbelievablely heavy rainfall, caused not only the banks of the White River to jump something like 25 feet above flood stage, but because the ground was frozen, there was nowhere for all that water to go. Result: a goodly portion of the town was suddenly under five feet of water almost overnight.
I was a print reporter back then. I borrowed a pair of hip-waders from the fire department so I could go with the investigation crews into the worst areas. I remember standing in someone’s living room interviewing them, knee-deep in floodwater. It was awful. I felt so sorry for the owners. A whole chunk of that side of town got condemned by FEMA and was never built on again because the site elevation was too low.
And of course, the Blizzard of ’78. I was at Ball State in Muncie, In.
I almost forgot about the Great Blizzard of 1950. I was 5. The blizzard started on Thanksgiving. We were supposed to have a lot of family over, and my mother was preparing a 23-pound turkey. The entire affair had to be canceled, and the snow continued for several days. I remember looking out from an upstairs window, the top of the snow only a couple of feet below. Somehow my father was able to dig out from one of the doors, and out to the street. There was only one lane plowed, with huge mountains of snow on each side. There was no traffic at all, so we kids played on the mountains of snow, sliding down into the street.
The only down side was that we had to eat turkey for about a week.
I went through Isabel without even losing power and went through the masses of snow a year and a half ago with an all wheel drive SUV that went through the snow so well that I didn’t miss a day of work.
My family and I were lucky enough to have also living in Baton Rouge during these two hurricanes. Your experiences definitely ring true, except I think that we did a little better in Rita, in the SE part of B.R., than you did.
The tough thing about Katrina in Baton Rouge was not the storm itself, but the aftermath. We sheltered much of my wife’s family (11 adults, one toddler, four cats, three dogs) for a few weeks in a 3-bedroom apartment. The crowding led to some regrettable behavior within the family, grudges from which are still carried to this day.
Hurricane Alicia got my attention, to the point where I decided I would ever after get out of town whenever a hurricane threatened. And I have.
In a way, though, TS Allison was worse. No wind, just a downpour so intense you could practically swim in it. It came within inches of flooding my house when the rain finally stopped. My previous house was under 3 feet of water.
I remember the Chicago Blizzard of '79. Now THAT was a blizzard. All normality stopped for weeks on end. Snowplows driving over cars. Store rooves collapsing from the weight of the snow. School out for a week. No garbage pickup, so trash was piling up all over. The abandoned cars.
It’s the blizzard I judge all blizzards by, and nothing since has even come close.
And I loved every minute.
The Chicago killer heat wave has already been mentioned, but really, that was a problem of poorer older or infirm folks with no air conditioning, and too afraid to leave their homes because of crime. The Chicago subsidized housing was hit worst, because they were filled with poor, elderly and infirm people and also with drug addicts, (because drug addiction is a disability, don’t you know.) So of course these poor people sat inside their oven-like apartments so the drug addicts wouldn’t jump them in the hallways.
Horrible disaster, but not exclusively a natural one.
Myself, only tornado warnings, large hail, a few flash floods and a couple blizzards.
My parents were a different story. They were not people you wanted to travel with. Ever. They lived in West Texas, but travelled quite a bit and managed to always be in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Loma Prieta Earthquake. :eek::eek:
Big Bear Earthquake. :eek:
Mount Pinatubo Volcano. :eek::eek::eek:
Tokyo freak snowstorm that shut down the bullet train.:eek:
An avalanche outside of Aspen that killed the other two people at the opposite end of a scenic overlook.:eek::eek::eek::eek::eek:
A typhoon I don’t remember the name of in Indonesia.:eek:
Oklahoma City when the Federal Building went boom.:eek::eek::eek::eek::eek:
Hurricane Andrew (they were in the Keys and evacuated to Tampa).:eek:
Hurrican Rita (they were in Houston at MD Anderson where my dad was undergoing cancer treatments and couldn’t evacuate).:eek:
We always threatened to call FEMA or the Secret Service and have them confined to the state of Texas.
My mother continues to travel and hasn’t encountered a single natural disaster since my dad died 9 years ago.
I haven’t really experienced anything horrible. I was in Florida for a hurricane for 2004 but it really wasn’t a bad one, other than it kept me locked in my hotel room for a few days.
Some hurricane or other came to MA between '85 and '88 (don’t remember when, just know where I was living so it narrows things down). It apparently wasn’t a bad one because the buses were still running and we went grocery shopping during it, although there was a tree on our porch when we got home. Another hurricane came through MA in '91 or '92 I think but it also wasn’t bad and I remember walking to the movie store a mile away. I was 11 or 12 at the time. My mom was pissed when she found out.
A tornado passed through my town on June 1 and did some pretty bad damage but completely avoided my neighborhood.
Other than that, lots of blizzards but nothing like the one in the 70’s (which I wasn’t alive for). I don’t think I ever even had school canceled for more than 2 straight days for a blizzard.
Floods. I’ve sandbagged to save my house and my neighborhood numerous times. Been lucky, the worst I’ve had was a foot of water in the basement. Had to park a couple blocks away and wade to my house for days at a time, several times.
All hurricanes that passed through or near Puerto Rico between 1983 and 2001, with the most notable ones being Hugo (1989) and Georges (1998). The last one was scary. The wooden planks my parents had set up to protect the living room windows gave up, and the wind and rain entered our apartment (9th floor). Luckily, I had insisted to them that they should take the same precautions they had taken for Hugo, so the big dining room table blocked most of the hallway, and all the furniture was stowed in the bedrooms. We stayed in my bedroom (the only one with a door), and since the wind was blowing, all of us had to block the door with my twin mattress and our weight. It was one of the longest nights I’ve lived.
While in Baton Rouge, I went through Katrina and Rita, and I third what was said before. Also, I did get a t-shirt after Hurricane Katrina. I worked at the refugee animal shelter, taking care of all the animals whose owners couldn’t keep them, plus a few stranded lucky ones who were rescued from NOLA.
April 3rd 1974 tornadoes. I lived in one of the places (Lexington KY) that escaped damage.
Blizzard of '78. My brother and sister were sent to shovel the driveway, took one look at it, tossed the shovel, and just built a snow fort. (3 times in later years I actually got caught in blizzards while out walking, though none as infamous as the '78 one.)
A flood which caused several hundred in damages to our basement and a hassle with the insurance company.
A 5.2 earthquake which I initially mistook for a nuclear war and then for Armageddon. It cracked our front porch and may have caused a sinkhole under my parents’ kitchen.
Droughts and heatwaves too numerous to mention, though the one in 1980 springs to mind–the death toll in town was bad enough that the Red Cross issued a fan drive and we donated.
Range fires, which mostly caused sinus irritation but on one occasion led to some confusion and hilarity when a grow op a few miles off caught fire and I tried to figure out which of my neighbors were partying in their yard.
A psittacosis outbreak–nobody died except one of the parrots and when I asked the vet if I should warn people who had been exposed to a potentially lethal disease he told me to keep my mouth shut.
Nothing too severe. In Florida in 2004 I was in the middle of Frances and Jeanne within a couple weeks of each other, but they were downgraded from hurricanes to tropical storms by the time they hit Gainesville. My house lost power for only a half hour in the first storm but about three days in the second storm.
I was also in the blizzards of Washington DC in 2010 and Chicago in 2011. Those sucked also, but it’s not like my life was in danger or anything as long as I stayed inside. On the plus side, my company shut down for the latter blizzard for the first time in about 45 years, so I got a snow day.
1996 - Hurricane Fran, Raleigh, NC (no power +/- 9 days)
1999 - Hurricane Floyd, Raleigh, NC
2000 - 2004 - Miscellaneous hurricanes and tropical storms, New Orleans
2005 - Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans. Evacuated before landfall; home didn’t get too much wind damage, didn’t flood, didn’t get looted. Did not sleep in my own bed for 49 days. No power and water for about 45 days.
2007 - Direct hit by F2 tornado, New Orleans. Tornado was rising when and went over our house, so damage was somewhat limited; still pretty messy.
June 2008 - Flooding. I was in a sangbagging pack for a week along with my parents and neighbors, and ultimately my parents’ home got flooded. They did not have flood insurance (nor did 90% of their neighbors). It was devastating to my parents, they lived in a one-bedroom apt for 6 months and had to have their home gutted and rebuilt. Most people walked away. Thankfully, FEMA helped a lot, but I swear, my mother still holds ill will against some higher force for that happening…
2006, Colorado: Annoying blizzard: no food in the house and no one was delivering pizza, but the cows got food airdropped to them. Santa missed a few homes that year.
I seem to be just fine.
edit: Forgot the flood of 93. I wasn’t in IA for the latest flood, but my dad’s properties were wrecked. Every flood resulted in us getting out of school to sandbag.
I experienced the Blizzards of 78, and 93 (Western PA Editions)
I moved to Houston and got to live through the Flood of 2001 and The Great, F’d Up, Hurricane Rita Evacuation of 2005. (Which I wrote about on the Dope under my original handle, Davmilasav.)
The day I got to LA there was a 3.0 quake – nobody noticed but me. That summer there was a huge heat wave and all the stores in LA sold out of fans. I had to drive 50 miles to find a Wal-Mart with an electric fan.
Then I go to Upstate NY and get a horrible blizzard on SuperBowl night 2007.
When I moved back to PA I got to deal with the February Blizzard of 2010.
If you pay me, I won’t move to YOUR neck of the woods!
I recall the great drought of '76 - I was on holiday in Dorset that year and remember sitting outside the Silent Woman pub watching fire engines rushing down the road to fires in Wareham Forest.
What about ‘Hurricane Fish’ in 1987? I remember that. Er, Kind of (I slept through it,:rolleyes: but remember the trees it blew down).
I worked at the refugee animal shelter, taking care of all the animals whose owners couldn’t keep them, plus a few stranded lucky ones who were rescued from NOLA.
Santa missed a few homes that year.