The scary t-storm story thread

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Large super cell storm with funnel clouds in west of Calgary on Trans Canada Hiway July 15, 2004

Last edited by spudnik on 10 May 2008, 1:41 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Edmonton Extreme Precipitation Event
White Mud Freeway hail storm and flash flood July 11 2004
The rain and hail left large ice flows on the White Mud freeway in Edmonton. Over 100 mm of rain fell in less than 2 hours.

That is soo cool. I don't think anything I've experienced can top one of those plains storms. We just didn't get that kind of hail farther east. I do remember a few thunderstorms that produced extremely heavy rainfall, on the order of an inch every 15 minutes. I can remember several occasions of that kind of rain, but never with the hail like that.

Oh my

Im glad i wasnt near one of those storms, but it sure is interesting to look at from a distance..

That wasn't a normal storm, the weather is normally very stable in Edmonton,
that was one of those storms that only occur once every 100 years.

I see

We had a flood here in 95 that was the worst in about 100 years as well. I guess we are lucky that stuff like this only occurs every once in a while...

there was a flood in Ashland, OR in 1996. Lithia Creek overflowed through the town and the micro brewery on creek side was flooded, it bouyed up the huge vats through the ceiling above and into the next ceiling too distroying the whole building internally.

Merle

I'm obsessed with t-storms & severe weather, too. Interesting story! Here are a few of my scariest experiences (the Reader's Digest version):

- I was driving home after picking my husband up from work and got on the freeway. I drove into what I thought was a garden-variety thunderstorm but turned out to be a heavy microburst. The wind was blowing at least 70mph or more (hard enough that trees were all bent at a 90 degree angle on the side of the highway). Everything turned white outside the windows of my car and the car itself began to rock from side to side. Just as I pulled over and my husband suggested that we get out and jump into a ditch, it stopped.

- I was driving back home after a trip to a beach in North Carolina, I drove into a thunderstorm that was pouring down more rain than I'd ever seen in my life (and that includes the above-mentioned microburst). Even though it was only 11:00am in the morning, the sky was so dark the streetlamps came on. I pulled my car over beneath a freeway overpass to wait it out and that's when I looked in my rearview mirror and saw a tornado swirl down and began snaking along the freeway behind us. This tornado was rain-wrapped, and I normally wouldn't even have spotted it except for the fact it was less than a quarter mile away from where we were parked. Immediately no longer caring about the heavy rain, I stomped on the gas and drove away as fast as I could. Miraculously enough, my car never once hydroplaned.


- In Louisiana (about 4 years prior to Katrina) I was driving from New Orleans to Baton Rouge in the remains of a tropical storm that had rolled in. The rain was very heavy and getting worse, but I pressed on, even though the wind was really picking up. When we got home, I went to turn on the weather channel and saw that there was a severe thunderstorm warning for our area. I also noticed that the barometric pressure shown on the TV was dropping like a rock, all the way down to 28.3. That's when I KNEW the storm was going to be bad. I sat on the edge of the bed in my room and looked out the window at the rain. Suddenly, the rain, wind & everything stopped cold. My ears popped.
I stood up when I saw this massive oak tree outside my apartment window twist all the way around like it was being strangled by God. I shot out of the bedroom, past my astonished husband, screamed 'tornado' and grabbed my kids. We dove into the bathroom, where I put both kids in the tub and told them to lie down in it. Just as I curled up on the floor, I realized my husband was still in the bedroom, watching for the tornado liek an idiot. I screamed for him to get into the bathroom and finally he came in a few seconds later when this horrible noise filled the air. It sounded like a cross between the world's largest jet engine and a woman screaming, with this earth-shaking rumble. I curled up on the floor and prayed. When the noise stopped, we went outside to look at what had happened and saw that a tornado had passed with 200 yards of our apartment. An EF3, I later found out. I left Louisiana a month later.

I still live in the Southeastern US, so thunderstorms are a part of life here, but I've never seen (or heard) a storm as bad as that one in Baton Rouge. (And I've seen some nasty ones here, too, just this past Thursday).
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Holy crap! Are those your own pictures? I would have freaked the F* out had I seen that much rain and hail come down all at once. It looks like an icy river broke through a levee or something!

The ones in Calgary are mine, and a friend of mine e-mailed me the ones in Edmonton