Being from Michigan, the chances of my home state experiencing a hurricane are pretty much non-existent. I happened to be in Florida during Tropical Storm Bonnie in 2010, but that was pale in comparison to an actual hurricane. We left my grandmother's house early in the morning to get to my aunt's house before the storm hit that day, and I remember it was such a nice breeze at around 8 AM, but by the afternoon, the sky went from blue to black and it was raining sideways. That was about it. Thankfully I've never been unlucky enough to be in the coastal area when a major hurricane hit, but I started wondering what I would have been in for had I been down there when, say, Hurricane Charley hit the area where my grandparents lived at that time back in 2004. So, anybody here been through a hurricane?
Hurricanes are scary but thrilling. My family went through Arthur the past summer on vacation in the outer banks. It shook the house and was very noisy, just a big continuous thunderstorm with wind that doesn't let up. Clean-up was a pain. You're not missing too much!
I'm in-land, and we only get the aftermath usually. Sandy, for example, wasn't too bad for us. A hurricane that came through a year or two before that was harsh, having us lose power for about a day or so and our basement flooding. It's not all bad, but I'm sure my friends in NY can confirm how bad it gets.
I live about 150 miles from the ocean, so we've only had a very weak tropical storms even get near, but we've had relatives from Houston who evacuated during Katrina/Rita. The damage to Houston was minimal, but they did suffer the effects of the massive evacuation. Water was sold at $10/gallon at convenience stores along the routes; gas was short. Back home, it was the only event that ever triggered me to actually implement my contingency plan. Won't admit or deny, but there may be a binder in my safe titled "Contingency Plan" :lol:. My main concern was securing food and water because, while not on the direct route of the hurricane, I did know other people (read: people like me :lol would hoard and I wanted to supplement what I already had. The five B's of being prepared (according to some) are Beans, Bullets, BandAids, Bullion, and Bibles :lol:. But, no, never been in a hurricane.
Remember Typhoon Haiyan? Yeah, Philippines was totally fucked up by that Typhoon. It didnt passed over to where I live directly, but it still did devastated us. It uproots several giant mango trees and flooded our place. I was awake while it is raining hard and all I can hear are the roaring winds. I went outside to see what's going on and I saw out neighbor's roof flying! I also saw the banana trees of our neighbor losing its leaves. The classes were suspended for almost 2 weeks. But that was in where I live, you didnt know what happened to those who are living in where the Typhoon directly passed through. LOTS of people died there. Lots of people there also lost their home. Several people survived. They even said that they wish they died in the storm because they are slowly dying in the evacuation area (no food, no water, no clothes).
Being in the Northeast I've been through plenty of hurricanes, but none of them caused severe damage where I lived fortunately. They are loud, and dark, and sometimes it can feel like they will cause your house to tremble and break apart, but it's not actually happened. Sometimes the power goes out for a few hours or a day if the lines are down. In the summer it's not bad, snow storms in the winter with power outages are much worse due to the loss of heat. At most after a hurricane we've dealt with large branches that have fallen, though some people are less lucky. A few years back a neighbor had a tree fall on their garage and collapse a roof. When I was a kid our neighbor had a tree fall and wreck their back porch. That type of damage is not extremely uncommon and there's often "cleanup" after a storm to deal with fallen tree road blockages and such. In NH flooding was not so big a deal, but here in RI we are also flood prone and some areas can get hit pretty hard with flooding, another thing that may block roads and damage property.
Oh man, it's been lots of years since I've been through a hurricane living down here in miami. But that doesn't stop me from wishing that they wouldn't come back. It's kinda scary in my opinion, I've seen hurricanes do some pretty crazy shit. Two examples I saw firsthand: I watched from outside the front door, the house across from us had its aluminum garage get pulled up into the air and ripped apart, the aluminum was then thrown over the neighborhood and one of the pieces hit our mailbox and knocked it out of the ground ... it got way too broke up, so we had to get a new one. We were pretty thankful that we kept the shutters up on the windows, replacing a mailbox isn't all that bad but it's dangerous to have so much broken glass in your house. The other is one story I love to tell people, there was a house where the owners went on vacation in my neighborhood. While they were on vacation, the hurricane swept in. They had one big tree in the middle of their front yard, and the hurricane pushed it over so that it karate chopped their house in half, and it pulled up their entire front lawn in the process, it was just a big soil crater. That was wild.
We get then all the time. Seriously. One every other year. One time our power went out for 2 weeks. We had a generator which could only power a few things in the house. I stole the wifi from the neighbour. In one of the Hurricanes, a few years ago, I went outside in it
Survived Rita and Ike while in college. Rita didn't do much but Ike sure did. We were inside a sturdy dormitory building so we were safe inside, but afterwards there were tons of downed trees and power outages.
My family and I actually got caught in a hurricane while visiting my sister in Houston when I was a kid. I was only 6 or 7 and my sister lived in an apartment complex at the time and all I can remember was it rained heavily for hours and the parking lot flooded and it was extremely windy. I think it was a cat 1 hurricane so there was little to no damage aside from flooding. Edit: I've also lived through a couple hurricanes here in NY. The latest being Sandy I have friends that suffered damage in the NYC area but the little part of the storm that hit here was awesome. I remember the strange mixture of cool/warm air whirled around by strong winds. My friend and I actually drove up to my camp on Lake Ontario and hung out on the beach and watched the waves roll in and the wind was incredible (I love wind and waves so soothing!!)
When my dad and my aunt were little they went with my grandpa to Florida and they were driving through a hurricane. My dad said it was one of the scariest things of his life.
My favorite hurricane was Charlie. My father came up from just to help to take my sister and I to Lakeland. Then it redirected from Bradenton more toward Punta Gorda then up and instead went toward Lakeland. So like halfway through our reservation we pulled out of the hotel to get somewhere else. I was woken up at like 6 to pack my bags and what not. That was fun. Does anyone remember Katrina? Went it sat in the Gulf, occasionally slapping the coasts with rain, does anyone remember the projected path of the hurricane was basically a star?
Been through a fair number of hurricanes (and eye walls, because my hometown apparently has a bullseye on it -.-) and really what distinguishes it from other storms is the noise. You hear the wind whipping everything in addition to the rain and branches/other crap breaking off of trees. It is sort of surreal and almost entertaining, until the power goes out. Then you know you're screwed for about a week as you try to deal with melting frozen/refrigerated food products, sweating your ass off with no air conditioner (maybe a generator-powered fan or window unit a/c if you're really lucky) and in my case, since we had a pump-driven well, no running water either. I'm glad my house never got damaged, but that good fortune colored my opinion of the power outage to be twice as bad as the storm itself.
Yeah, I'll never forget the photos. And both sides of the freeway have cars going in the SAME direction. http://yourweatherblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/rita_evacuation1.jpg A hurricane warns you. An earthquake does not. Neither does a tornado, come to think of it ... when the afternoon sky turns real dark and it's really, really quiet ... now that is weird. But you really don't know if that will make for a tornado or not, and in which direction it will go.
I used to live in Louisiana so Hurricanes were just part of life really, though I was quite young at the time and I always found exciting. When Hurricane Andrew came most of our street was decimated, we lost some roof tiles.
I went through three in one season in the Caribbean Sea levels rise… Dark skies Then horizontal rain for hours The worst part is actually the days/weeks after when the power is out and you can't shower or cook or listen to radio or TV..
It is not devastating for us. The power sometimes goes out, roads get flooded, if you have things outside it will get blown away. But we live in a safe house, others have gotten their basements flooded and a few people close to the beach got their houses destroyed.
It's pretty great. Strong winds, heavy rain, thunderstorms, power outage, etc.. it's definitely something I like.
