Deals.Woot

I have seen wall clouds, and circulating clouds. And there have been many tornado warnings where they touched down nearby. I was working in downtown Fort Worth in 2000 when a tornado came through, but left for home half an hour before it arrived. It crossed a road I drove and hit buildings only 6 blocks away.
Luckily, I was already home when it happened.

If you live long enough, I suppose you're bound to see plenty of weather events up close. I have, and I have. I've seen tornadoes headed in my direction twice in one day, in Colorado (probably less than half a mile in the second case). We headed towards the basement, and were VERY lucky to see them pass us all by. I'm so very sad for all those in Alabama this morning, and my heart goes out to them.

I've been in several major earthquakes, although the one in Japan dwarfs anything we've had in the US, including the one in Alaska before most people on Deals were born (1964, and 9.2 on the Richter scale). The thing about an earthquake is that you know, once the first shock has hit, that there are going to be many more in the next few days or weeks, and that any one of those might be worse than the initial one (although not usually).

I've seen a two-tailed tornado before. I've also seen a water spout. Other than that, not much besides seeing a small twister off in the distance when visiting my family in Illinois.

I rode through Hurricane Rita and Ike. Slept through most of Ike. It was crazy.

I experienced a hurricane in an ocean front room on the Outer Banks of North Carolina. I was ok until I tried to leave the room. The door opened into the wind and I couldn't open it with all my weight. Then I got scared.

in '96, i lived/played through a flood caused by 17" of rain in less than 48 hours. luckily it was summer, so the schools had no issue with lots of kids missing class. my summer camp was closed down, my uncle hit a 16" bass on the HIGHWAY, and i actually canoed into my friend's house!

i lived on a small cul-de-sac of good neighbors and friends. the parents spend 3 nights drinking out in the driveways. the kids played. luckily a neighbor owned a seriously huge pickup & drove outside of the flood zone to get pizza & other food for everyone. plus we all had generators, thank goodness!

as a kid, it was great fun until the flood left & had to start throwing everything in the basement away. we were quite lucky at the time: we got approx. 12" of water in the basement but it was unfinished & the water never touched the outside of our house. most of the luck was due to the fact that we lived on a golfcourse with a lot of dips and low ponds around - a whole bunch of the water went there first.

@rlapid2112: when it rains in vegas, that place quickly floods. the strip has been under water several times.

Took shelter when our barracks was just missed by a tornado when I was in fort knox KY for basic training back in '89. Felt my ears pop a coupla times, then afterwards, saw lots of broken trees, a car on it's side, etc...