Strangest weather phenomena you've seen?

[Higus]

There was a tornado that went through my city a few years back. This was Springfield, MA back in 2011. New England is not known for tornadoes.

This touched down less than a mile from where I lived at the time. The weather that evening was insane. It was pitch black by 6pm with non-stop lightning and hard rain for hours. Never seen anything like it. The aftermath was pretty impressive. One side of the street would be fine and the other would have a bunch of felled trees and traffic signs.

 

[Organic Damage]

Thunder storms are what I miss most about Texas, I've seen some pretty good light shows. But after life guarding for a few years, I do my best to get inside the moment I see lightning now lol. Though once when I was feeling a bit suicidal, I decided to take a nap during a pretty bad thunderstorm. I woke up feeling wet and refreshed, but sadly no super powers.

You ever seen ball lightning? That stuff fascinates me.

We had a downburst/bomb cyclone that knocked over a bunch of powerlines and trees last year but other than that we don't tend to get too much weird weather over here. Coastal water/air currents seem to moderate things somehow.

Oh, Hurricane Juan hit us square on in 2000 or whenever, but I guess that's not completely out of historical precedent.

 

[rj144]

Saw these clouds a few years back and took this pic:

 

[Hollywood Jack]

This happens where I live from time-to-time, although usually a bit further east or west of where I live. Driving through storms while coming back after evacuating from Irma was crazy.

 

[ralphc1]

Those microbursts are fairly common in Wisconsin. You can be driving along on a clear sunny day and run into a bank of clouds. Sometimes the rain comes like someone poured out a giant bucket and it takes down trees.

The worst was one on July 15, 1980 when the jet stream dropped down. Rain was coming horizontally. My power was out for 2 weeks.

Entering Wisconsin around 7:30 p.m., the storm devastated approximately 4,800 square miles of St Croix, Pierce, Dunn, Eau Claire, Chippewa, and Clark counties; the band of damage was more than 40 miles wide. The greatest destruction occurred from Menomonie through Eau Claire.[1] A maximum wind speed of 112 mph[5] (180 km/h) was recorded at the Chippewa Valley Regional Airport at 8:48 p.m.,[1] blowing away the airport's anemometer;

The recorded wind speed at the airport was 112mph but that was misleading as the structure that the anemometer was mounted to was blown away. Another anemometer at a television station read 100 mph but that was as high as it was capable of registering. Some storm experts that investigated suspected that winds were closer to 160 mph.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Wisconsin_Derecho

 

[HunterSdVa29]

the 92 Landers quake (a 7.3) was epicentered about 15 miles from my house....

bowling alley, KMart, Banks collapsed, sinkholes formed, the highway split and formed a small chasm, in ground pools had like 5' waves in them, etc...

it was pretty damn wild, would've been way worse (like the smaller Northridge quake) if there were actually people living out here

 

[iThrillhouse]

years ago there was a snowstorm in BC. my family was driving home from visiting family and it turned to whiteout conditions. not like "oh heavy snow, that sure is crazy" but like literally white. 360 degrees around you. cars going like 10km/h on the highway because no one could see shit. we pulled off highway to some hotel that was basically sheltering hundreds of families until the whiteout was done. Only lasted a couple hours, but still the most insane weather I've seen in BC.

that or that crazy ass windstorm a few years ago was driving home from camping in my mums jeep with a mattress sticking out the back....least aerodynamic vehicle I've ever driven in...coming over the sea to sky I was FLOORING it and going 40km/h there was that much wind resistance....when we finally got onto the upper levels highway massive branches were raining down onto peoples cars. my wife had like a final destination moment and was like, "iTHRILLHOUSE, just be aware we will probably get hit by a large branch so dont freak out when it does." literally as sentence is over a massive branch smashes the hood of the jeep. No dent. nothing....perfectly fine....was absolutely nutty

 

[Oboeplata]

I once had a chat with a man from Saskatchewan, Canada.

He told me that he could, literally, see the rain coming in from afar when it was sunny where he was standing.

I thought that was pretty damn cool.

 

[Fatt Hughes]

a few weeks back actually. Was overcast as I was leaving work, but the illumination of the morning was strange. Almost dream like, as if there was more than one sun beyond the clouds. It just had an overall strangness I never experienced before.

 

[rj144]

I once had a chat with a man from Saskatchewan, Canada.

He told me that he could, literally, see the rain coming in from afar when it was sunny where he was standing.

I thought that was pretty damn cool.

You've never been in a tall building or roof, and seen rain coming? It's fairly normal to me.

 

[Staph infection]

A tornado start in a field next to my house on a warm sunny day in south Florida.

 

[Oboeplata]

You've never been in a tall building or roof, and seen rain coming? It's fairly normal to me.

I don't know. He said that it was sunny, but he could literally see the rain coming in.

To think of it, it was normal for him though.

 

[Prefect]

I have seen a few tornado's so that isn't too strange.

Though this isn't that exciting but having days in winter in Minnesota were it gets up to like 60 F or -20 (-60 below with wind chill). Neither happen often but you don't forget it when it does.

Things that are strange, the red sunsets we had in 1989 in Minnesota due to forest fires in Canada. They couldn't control them so they just waited until winter for them to burn out. I don't know if I'll see that again. The Canadian forest fires dwarf anything that has happened in the U.S. in area. The largest fires in the U.S. aren't even half the size of the largest ones in Canada. They are massive. I am no firefighter or anything but I bet once they get to a certain size in these remote areas, you can't stop them. Winter does.

 

[Pure Peace]

Golf ball sized hail /ice balls raining down on a hot mid summer July day

 

[Mark Cutting]

I've seen some other cool stuff too, but nothing near as scary as the microburst. I saw a moon halo in Colorado that was really neat, and mammatus clouds in Texas that were actually kind of unnerving. It was like watching a glitch in the matrix or something, they looked artificial like a painting.

wow !

 

[RerouteToRemain]

So tonight I discovered what a wet microburst is, also known as a rain bomb. Basically during a storm, a cold cloud will drop down suddenly and hit the earth with extremely high winds and a lot of precipitation. I never heard of it before, but it turns out I drove through one in Minnesota last year. There was some light showers for about 30-45 minutes of driving, and within a 10 second time span, our car was hit with extreme winds and rain so strong, I couldn't see anything through the windshield. I panicked and slowed down, then remembered I was on a highway and sped up blind. Eventually we got to a place to pull over with a half a dozen other cars. The whole event lasted maybe a minute and we had drove through a light shower for maybe 20 more minutes before the rain stopped entirely. I thought maybe Minnesota just had some crazy weather, but it turns out I just experienced a crazy rare weather event.

It starts around 2:45 of this video.

We get them here pretty much every summer.

Here is a bad one from like 2 years ago, 116+ mph winds, ridiculous amount of water.

 

[Bunk Moreland]

Went to New Orleans (UK checking in) for the first time many years ago. Couldn't grasp how it was so warm (100+) even at 3am or even when thunderstorms hit the skies. Also thought the world was going to end when the major storms hit. Crazy.

I love when it rains in NO. Just brings the piss and beer smell to the tip of your nostrils.

 

[BearGrounds]

When I was in college we got roughly 10 feet of snow in about 8 days. Full blown white outs during the nights, where you couldn't see 5 feet away, because the high winds were whipping up the snow before it even had a chance to settle. Despite all that, me and my homies still braved the elements to get beer.

I towed my buddy around the streets in his Jeep while he snowboarded and hit jumps off of the enormous snow banks. The snow eventually had to be front loaded and taken away by the truck load, because after a few days, there ended up being nowhere to put it all. Some snowbanks grew to be higher than houses.

It made national news.

Same region, during summer, a violent rain storm moved in so fast I've never seen anything like it in my entire life. It swept across the sky in seconds, looking like Armageddon. Dumped water all over us (we were having a block party and everyone was drinking and playing beer pong outside), getting all the ladies wet, then was gone just as fast as it came in, the sunny skies returning.

Good times.

 

[Mark Cutting]

 

[Losfer Words]

We get crazy monsoons here. It is not uncommon to have a storm raging in your backyard while your front yard is sunny and dry.