Thunderstorms, Tornadoes, Blizzards, Derecho's and other storms thread. - Share your storm experiences here.

[Soycast Guy]

That tornado is gonna hit my area in a couple hours. Never seen anything like it. It’s a wall of red full of tiny red clusters.

 

[Gravemind]

Going to give kind of a canned response here, but it's good, life-saving advice that's been widely instituted for severe weather for the last near-decade now:

If a tornado warning's issued for your area, go to the lowest floor, smallest, interior room of the building you're currently inside. Put as many walls between you and the outside as possible. Ideally, if you have a basement or storm shelter, take cover within them. If not, Anything from an interior closet, bathroom, stairwell room (beneath a staircase) will usually be safest. Generally, you don't want to be near any outside-facing walls or windows. You're going to want to wear hard-soled shoes, pants, a helmet, and have any important documents (like licenses, medical information, medications, what have you) on hand just in case.

If you're in a mobile home, or any sort of prefab, manufactured structure, get the fuck out and either go to your nearest gas station, hotel, or a neighbor's/friend's/family member's house – somewhere sturdier than your residence. If there's not enough time for that, then take cover in the nearest roadside ditch. You'll get battered by rain, wind, and hail, but it's safer than being flung around by a tornado.

You generally do not want to be driving when a tornadic storm is in progress. You should only hit the road as a last resort, and even then, have a way to be mindful of the current weather to make sure you don't end up driving directly into the path of an ongoing tornado – this is usually the same sort of practice that chasers employ.

Be safe out there.

 

[Sundae]

Since childhood my family and I have endured many hurricanes. Matthew back in 2016 was one of the worst. While it was an interesting experience watching the chaos outside from inside the comfort of my home, I hope to never have to go through that ever again.

One of my most memorable experiences involving storms happened one night on my way to work a few years ago. IT was summer time, and around here we get plenty of thunderstorms, and this night there was a strong one with rain coming down so hard I could barely see a few inches ahead of my car. I was trying not to panic because I was on an exit to the interstate and could barely see, so I turned up my car radio to listen to music to calm my nerves. A month earlier I had found a local station that played alternative music, and at the moment that heavy rain hit In This Love by Stick Figure began to play. That was my introduction to what would become one of my favorite musicians.

Hearing that song play while driving in torrential rain during a heavy thunderstorm was one of those experiences that sticks with you for life.

After that I began to get into storm chasing, and wouldn't mind getting a good quality video recorder and try my hand at storm chasing one day.

 

[Agamemnon Busmalis]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TcUkArSFiIc

This is a favorite video of mine from a trucker driving into Joplin in 2011 that really hits home how nasty a HP tornadic supercell really is. It becomes absolutely black as night during the mid-afternoon once he drives into the core of the storm...I've never seen something like this in my life with any storm I've been in, and I've been through two with an EF-4 and EF-3 respectively.

What I found most unsettling was the complete lack of lightning, just pitch black darkness.

 

[Gravemind]

Since childhood my family and I have endured many hurricanes. Matthew back in 2016 was one of the worst. While it was an interesting experience watching the chaos outside from inside the comfort of my home, I hope to never have to go through that ever again.

One of my most memorable experiences involving storms happened one night on my way to work a few years ago. IT was summer time, and around here we get plenty of thunderstorms, and this night there was a strong one with rain coming down so hard I could barely see a few inches ahead of my car. I was trying not to panic because I was on an exit to the interstate and could barely see, so I turned up my car radio to listen to music to calm my nerves. A month earlier I had found a local station that played alternative music, and at the moment that heavy rain hit In This Love by Stick Figure began to play. That was my introduction to what would become one of my favorite musicians.

Hearing that song play while driving in torrential rain during a heavy thunderstorm was one of those experiences that sticks with you for life.

After that I began to get into storm chasing, and wouldn't mind getting a good quality video recorder and try my hand at storm chasing one day.

Just a note, these days it's advised to network a bit and get yourself hooked up with experienced chasers first whenever you do decide to make that trip. There's a bevvy of rookie chasers out there making dumb decisions and putting themselves at risk, and it's highly inadvisable to join some kind of "first time chasing" trip where they just pile a bunch of inexperienced chasers into a van to go chasing.

I distinctly recall there being tornadic storms one evening in Oklahoma just last year that one such "chase tour" group ended up getting hit by, because they ended up inadvertently driving directly into the path of an active tornado that did one of those rare, weird weather things where the tornado's path ended up circling back around into itself and re-intensifying.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TcUkArSFiIc

This is a favorite video of mine from a trucker driving into Joplin in 2011 that really hits home how nasty a HP tornadic supercell really is. It becomes absolutely black as night during the mid-afternoon once he drives into the core of the storm...I've never seen something like this in my life with any storm I've been in, and I've been through two with an EF-4 and EF-3 respectively.

What I found most unsettling was the complete lack of lightning, just pitch black darkness.

HP supercells and rain-wrapped tornadoes are some of the spookiest because, even in ideal daytime conditions, there is absolutely zero spotting the actual tornado within those. Rain will be falling too hard and too fast to visually identify the tornado, and the only potential way of tracking it is via rotation on doppler radar. Those things can get pretty fucking massive at that, or they can have multiple vortices ongoing at once, all of which will be totally obscured by rain.

 

[Agamemnon Busmalis]

HP supercells and rain-wrapped tornadoes are some of the spookiest because, even in ideal daytime conditions, there is absolutely zero spotting the actual tornado within those. Rain will be falling too hard and too fast to visually identify the tornado, and the only potential way of tracking it is via rotation on doppler radar. Those things can get pretty fucking massive at that, or they can have multiple vortices ongoing at once, all of which will be totally obscured by rain.

Absolutely. Rain-wrapped, fast, intense tornadoes are especially common in Dixie Alley thanks to the sheer amount of warm, moist air moving north from the Gulf during the spring and early summer. Unfortunately most historical records about these tornadoes are limited prior to the Super Outbreak of '74 especially because of how rural much of the South was prior to the 1940s.

I imagine most of you subscribe to PecosHank, he has some really incredible footage of encountering rain-wrapped beasts out in OK/TX. As well as classic stovepipes, wedges and ropes of course.

 

[Gravemind]

New PDS Tornado Watch issued.

 

[Return of the Freaker]

Back in 2017, I experienced a microburst for the first time. It was strange and horrifying. It caused a four-day power outage too.

Have you guys ever had a microburst in your neighborhood?

Was driving on I-271 in Cleveland a couple years ago and saw a wet microburst off in the distance. You can tell wet ones really easy - big curtain of heavy rain that looks like a wedge tornado at first glance. Didn't see it actually drop but I could tell. Got home and later on the news they were talking about all the wind damage

 

[bliblblblbbllb]

Egg-sized hail is currently destroying the area. Pretty sure I heard some siding fly off, but I didn't look. It is LOUD outside. Sirens and everything. This is a top five for me. (In a safe place with all the pets, don't worry. And still shitposting on the farms!) Acts of nature don't scare me much. Literally what do you want me to do about it? You just get to a safe place and sit on your butt and say a little prayer.

---

I was in a horrible blizzard once as a child in a trailer home. We made the mistake of opening the door to see what was up, and the wind BROKE the door. Much screaming ensued and it was eventually tied up with duct tape. It all froze onto the ground as a big ice block formed, and it was stuck like that for a week.

 

[Cheesegirl78]

All you Tornado Alley folks stay safe out there.

 

[Tsukasa Kadoya]

All you Tornado Alley folks stay safe out there.

Not gonna self dox but I live near the edge, and thankfully my town has avoided being wiped off the map for this long.
Southern Illinois will get struck by the same storm that hit Arkansas, and Northern Illinois will be hit by the storm that damaged towns in Iowa.
My dad once wanted to move to the South, but damn this is not making me invested in moving down there.

 

[NoodleFucker3000]

Aside from the occasional snow so high that I can't open the front door, the Adirondacks are very safe and stable as far as weather goes. Like yall out there having crazy fuckin weather. The worst I got was my magnolia tree getting split in half by lighting one year and a couple years later the other magnolia I planted to teplace that one also got split in half by lightning

 

[Agamemnon Busmalis]

Was driving on I-271 in Cleveland a couple years ago and saw a wet microburst off in the distance. You can tell wet ones really easy - big curtain of heavy rain that looks like a wedge tornado at first glance. Didn't see it actually drop but I could tell. Got home and later on the news they were talking about all the wind damage

Was it in September 2019? We got hit with a few of them on the east side around that time and there was some decent damage and power outages in Cleveland Heights.

There was also a really strange atmospheric phenomenon I spotted back in the autumn of 2019 driving home from work that I still don't know the cause of or its meteorological origin. There were these two long clouds that looked like jet contrails at first but then I saw the vortex structure within the one moving towards the other. It was so uncanny seeing them reconnect and eventually dissipate into normal cirrus clouds running along the line of the prevailing winds.

The weather otherwise was cool and clear with no thunderstorms before or after if it helps. My guess is it was some kind of odd interaction between horizontal vortex clouds due to Lake Erie but it was the strangest meteorological phenomenon I've ever seen.

 

[gorororo]

One time when I was in daycare, there was a big storm. It must have been a tornado, or close to one, because they had all of us huddle in the bathrooms. The wind was strong enough that it forced the building's entrance door open. When my parents picked me up and we got home, a tree that ~2-3ft in diameter had fallen exactly in between our house and the neighbor's.
I was in Iowa just after the 2020 deracho and the damage was impressive. Flipped semis stringing the highway, broken highway signs, flattened cornfields, and silos that looked like dented cans. Even now, I think there'
s still damage from that storm.

 

[Soycast Guy]

The tornado passed my area and nothing happened. I’m slightly disappointed.

 

[Glowie Hunter Art Bell]

I've lived in the Midwest for 35 years and have luckily never been seriously threatened by a tornado.

I had pretty crippling storm anxiety as a kid. The EAS announcements on the TV and radio freaked me the fuck out (they still kind of do to be honest). My dad was usually drunk during storm warnings as well because his work crew would take the day off and spend it in the bar if bad weather was forecasted. When he was drunk he would do shit like go outside and mow the lawn when the tornado sirens were going off just to spite my mom because he knew it would piss her off. It also terrified me and I would beg him while sobbing not to do it. My dad is an interesting man.

As an adult I don't really give a shit.

EDIT: I forgot that my car was borderline totaled by baseball sized hail back in 2018 during the six months I lived in Denver. That was pretty nuts. Insurance company cut me a check for $5,000 though which was based. Never got the damaged fixed besides replacing the windshield.

A few years ago, Danville IL got whacked by a gnarly hailstorm. A bunch of car dealers got the bulk of the hail, as well as people's private cars. There were hail damage repair tents up there for months. Never saw anything like that elsewhere

 

[Glowie Hunter Art Bell]

I've got no good storm photos that don't reveal my identity/place of work occupation, so have some big sky country

I spend alot of time driving around the midwest and upper midwest/great plains. I've got a few nasty weather stories from that and just life

- I got caught in that derecho in DeMotte, IN back in 2020. Luckily it had weakened by then, or it would have tipped my truck over. I was parked against a building to ride things out, and the truck made contact with the siding a few times.

- Drove alongside a small tornado about half a mile away from me back in 2021, in Central IL. Never came towards me, just paced me. And then spun away to the west.

- Looked out my front porch to the west at sunset one time to see 2 rain wrapped tornadoes just doing their thing. Dodged my house by about half a mile.

- Caught a headwind in ND that was literally strong enough to slow my truck down. I'm governed at 75mph, I could only do 50-55. Normally I have a 300 mile/tank range, I burned 50 gal in 180 miles. Wind up there does not fuck around.

- Went to SD last year for vacation. On the way back we stopped in Chamberlain, SD for a rest, and when we came out the skies were BLACK. Got closer to Pukwaunee and there were flipped over semis, campers etc everywhere. Got off to get gas, but the power was out everywhere. The only gas station we found with power, had a grain elevator on top of it. Ended up taking my little shitbox focus on an offroad adventure thru southeastern SD to follow the backroads to Sioux Falls, dodging downed powerlines and flipped trucks. Met some nice county sheriffs who were helpful as can be.

- when I was in HS, the ethernet cable from my PS3 ran OUTSIDE around the foundation of the house and back in thru the other side. This setup worked fine for years until lightning hit it. Fried my ps3, physically blew apart a DVD player and a dog collar control box. Fun times.

I've got plenty of these lol. Midwestern weather is gnarly and if you live with it it becomes part of you

 

[Return of the Freaker]

Was it in September 2019? We got hit with a few of them on the east side around that time and there was some decent damage and power outages in Cleveland Heights.

Yes. I was living in Euclid at the time and working IT for First Energy in Wadsworth.

August 2021 me and my dad saw multiple fair weather waterspouts come ashore at Euclid hospital. Nothing too strong but between the ones that went over land and the ones that stayed over the lake there were at least 7

Edit: when I was 5 or 6 a really nasty storm came through. I remember standing on the front porch and seeing a huge roll cloud come down the street and then big blast of wind and rain.

Now I'm in Southeast PA. The most exciting thing since moving has been high winds and heavy, but not too severe, thunderstorms. We could get a hurricane or noreaster.

 

[Meat Target]

I imagine most of you subscribe to PecosHank, he has some really incredible footage of encountering rain-wrapped beasts out in OK/TX. As well as classic stovepipes, wedges and ropes of course.

Love Pecos Hank. It's also very wholesome when he helps out critters.

 

[Agamemnon Busmalis]

August 2021 me and my dad saw multiple fair weather waterspouts come ashore at Euclid hospital. Nothing too strong but between the ones that went over land and the ones that stayed over the lake there were at least 7

I was 100% WFH back then thanks to the coof but sounds right. There was a harsh storm that moved through right around that time and it produced waterspouts.

Edit: when I was 5 or 6 a really nasty storm came through. I remember standing on the front porch and seeing a huge roll cloud come down the street and then big blast of wind and rain.

Now I'm in Southeast PA. The most exciting thing since moving has been high winds and heavy, but not too severe, thunderstorms. We could get a hurricane or noreaster.

I live in a condo in Menner, sorry Mentor, myself. We mostly miss the heaviest lake-effect snow but after moving from the apartment down in Chardon it's a whole different animal. More power losses due to the winds but less snow. The HA I pay dues to uses at least most of the money for proper snow removal and salting the sidewalks.

Scooter's Dawg House is opening tomorrow for anybody looking for some top-quality dogs with tons of ingredients on the way to Headlands Beach Park. Those fries they give you are absolutely insane in terms of quantity.