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Has your town yet been hit by today's thunderstorms?
Reading is currently being pummelled by electricity from the sky! As the associated soundwaves reach my building, small items on my desk rattle slightly. My plastic cup of water ripples as if I'm about to come face-to-face with a Tyrannosaurus Rex.
I've got a bloody headache.
Thunderstorms. Do you love the atmosphere they create, or do they scare the hell out of you? Tell me of the biggest, most intense storm you've ever witnessed. Storm stories, that's what I'm after.
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The rain had better bloody reach London. Although after I've been out for my payday shopping.
Storm Stories:
As a chile, my mum saw a tree get striked by lightning, and the cow standing underneath got all burnted up!
The summer I was living in the Colorado Rockies, at least two people died of lightning strikes when hiking above the treeline, which happens all the time apparently.
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I can never remember what you're supposed to do out in the open in a thunderstorm. Are you meant to lie down or something? I'll probably be cycling home in it a bit later and I don't want to pull in under a tree for shelter, only to be fried by God's Wrath. Will rubber/kevlar cycle tyres protect me from His vengeance?
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quote:Originally posted by dang65: Will rubber/kevlar cycle tyres protect me from His vengeance?
These man-made materials will surely anger Him further! No tin-foil hats. No suits of armour. You'd do best to cower before Him and beg for mercy. Or get a taxi...
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You should put up your brolly so you don't get wet.
Or if you rub your jumper with a balloon you can give yourself an overall negative charge and hence be less likely to attract the lightning. Or is it the other way round? If I got it backwards, at least the balloon will be safe.
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quote:Originally posted by dang65: Will rubber/kevlar cycle tyres protect me from His vengeance?
Yes
We get shit-loads of stomrs out here, all of the electric, pant-shitting variety. I think they're great but this may have something to do with it being so rare.
My scariest storm was in Australia though. I was catching the ferry from Brisbane to Stradbroke Island (recommended visiting btw) when a very sudden tropical storm broke over us. The waves were huge, boat rocking like a teacup ride at an amusment park. It didnt help that the water was apparently full of sharks and the loclas on the boat were shitting it. At one stage you couldnt see more than a meter from the ferry. On Stradbroke the storm had pulled up and blown over trees and taken out the electricity. Anyway, we were fine. Bloody scary when they started handing out life jackets thought!
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I've always loved thunderstorms, at least to watch from indoors. Apart from the time I was a passenger on a plane attempting to land through a thunderstorm.
Seeing flashes of lightning illuminating the plane's wings whilst being bounced about and generally shaken like a polaroid picture, was somewhat disconcerting.
Hearing the pilot punctiliously detail his every attempt to get through the clouds and go on to explain how much fuel we had left, racked up the pressure. He was German, it was a Lufthansa flight. Big on the detail.
Upon hearing the instruction to adopt the emergency nose-to-knees position for our next attempt, a whole row of besuited German businessmen broke into simultaneous prayer. I think it was "Hail Mary", but I'm not that familiar with the catechism in any language. It was quite impressive though.
The deal was that we circled peacefully above the storm, every so often catching a glimpse of the airport beneath - this may be where my love of the film Solaris comes from, come to think of it. Then we'd adopt the position and make a plunge into the washing machine, bounce about failing to land and come out again at a scary angle. This went on for what seemed like forever, but was probably only an hour or so before we gave up and made an emergency landing elsewhere.
But not before drinking a fair quantity of neat duty-free Southern Comfort, whilst bent double speaking gibbering bad French to the French guy sitting next to me, who was so scared/drunk he kept replying in German.
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There was a pretty spectacular thunderstorm up here last week (you might have seen some of the nearby flooding on the news). On Monday a colleague and I were talking about lightning strikes and he related a great tale about when he was walking up in the Yorkshire Moors as a young man.
He and a couple of pals had been up in the wilds north of Pickering and the sky had been getting darker and darker, threatening one godawful fucker of a storm. He had on one of those old-fashioned rucksacks with a metal frame holding the body of the thing off his back; anyway, as it got more and more sultry, the metal frame began to hum, louder and louder.
Unsurprisingly, he shrugged it off and ran like fuck.
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quote:Originally posted by ben: Unsurprisingly, he shrugged it off and ran like fuck.
It would be interesting to know how this story would have gone had he been carrying a metal-framed baby carrier instead.
Sorry. But I really don't have any stories about thunder storms. Saying "once I was in Ferrara, Italy, and there was this quite big thunderstorm rather close to my hotel and I watched it from my bed" isn't really interesting. But that's the biggest thunderstorm I can remember -- it wasn't that big and nothing interesting happened. The lights didn't even flicker or anything. I've lead a very sheltered life.
Planes get hit by lightning all the time. Every day. It's no biggie.
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One when I were little, the weatherman had predicted that the wind would be so dangerous that everyone should walk home together holding hands. My Dad, being too busy helping layabouts getting jobs that my friends auntie offered to walk me home. (I was the only latchkey in Junior school ) When my father got home, he told us all about how windy it had been on his way and the back doors suddenly swung open and the room was filled with a gust of air and blew everything all over the living room. Our cockatiel was sucked out with the wind and hurled off into the sky. When my brother got home, my dad spun a great yarn about how as he was sucked out of the room that he could clearly see how happy the bird was and I had to agree instead of pointing out that despite beaks not being able to smile, can certainly display a good sense of terror to acompany mad useless flapping motions that do nothing to stop you being hurled into orbit.
The paper the next day said that a tile had been lifted off the library roof and hurled like a shuriken, killing an old lady by flying into the side of her head. Fucking hell.
quote:Originally posted by statist: It would be interesting to know how this story would have gone had he been carrying a metal-framed baby carrier instead.
*Note to self: When walking with Sam on back in thundery weather, remember to earth baby correctly*Posts: 8657
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Check out the classy font type they've used on those babies. Those aren't the weapon of a barbarian no. Just looking at that jpeh makes me want to munch caviar and hurl ninja stars at mongols.
eta: 'jpeh' just nearly got me caught via stifledlol.
[ 24.06.2005, 08:41: Message edited by: New Way Of Decay ]
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They are lower in mass than all other typical stars since they are not thought be formed by Jeans collapse. They are generally also of smaller radius than stars although certain stellar remnants such as Kerr black holes may be smaller still. Sometimes they exibit high rotational velocities, comparitive to those of pulsars in the mid stages of spin-down.
I'll stop now.
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I was reading that and then, quite suddenly, I went blind. Turns out my eyes had got too bored to carry on. I therefore request that statist refrains from doing that again without a warning.
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quote:Originally posted by Vanilla Online Persona: I was reading that and then, quite suddenly, I went blind. Turns out my eyes had got too bored to carry on. I therefore request that statist refrains from doing that again without a warning.
Heh. You probably got confused because you haven't studied the basics. Would you like me to start from the beginning?
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quote:Originally posted by Vanilla Online Persona: Good Lord, it seems one can contract boredom blindness even from quite short sentences.
I can assure you that people in my department would have found that so funny that several would probably have been hospitalised. What's wrong with you?
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Sweet jesus no. Doc D wins the 'doctor you'd do a gay for 2005' awards. He's a doctor and he spins choons. I've got a desky and a male chairy. I've got a dairy over docdee.
quote:Originally posted by New Way Of Decay: Sweet jesus no. Doc D wins the 'doctor you'd do a gay for 2005' awards. He's a doctor and he spins choons. I've got a desky and a male chairy. I've got a dairy over docdee.
Yeah, I know that. I wasn't saying there was anything wrong with him. But he is a self-confessed nerd that works in a lab, that's all.
Wait. VOP: did you pick that guy because Samuelnorton called me a muppet the other day? I hope not.
[ 24.06.2005, 09:38: Message edited by: statist ]
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quote:Originally posted by statist: Yeah, I know that. I wasn't saying there was anything wrong with him.
But Beaker has a flapping jaw and gormless expression. I mean, he might have a nice personality but that's hardly complimentary. It's like being called New Way of Bullshit. Acceptable, but not quite fair.
quote:Originally posted by New Way Of Decay: It's like being called New Way of Bullshit. Acceptable, but not quite fair.
Being called New Way of Bullshit is alright. I mean, it's a lot better than old and predictable bullshit, isn't it? There is that old bullshit, it's true, nobody wants that. But some fresh new shiny bullshit, that's OK.
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grant
when you're surrounded and outnumbered, there's only one way out.
posted
quote:Originally posted by MiscellaneousFiles: Tell me of the biggest, most intense storm you've ever witnessed. Storm stories, that's what I'm after.
I'll refer you to a pair of graphics I created last summer:
September 3:
September 23
It was about what you'd expect.
There are still traffic lights missing at a few intersections, and some road signs are still down.
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Although we only have WeatherLite in this country instead of the real thing I do have a great video clip of my eldest son when he was about three-year-old. He's sitting on the stairs at home talking to his Gran on the phone. He's quite happy and just telling her that it's raining outside when, "BANG! RRRRRRRUUUUUmmmmmbLE" there's this massive thunderclap right on top of the house. His eyes open wide, then he drops the phone and does a full on toddler yell of fear.
Kind of thing an evil parent would save up and show at the lad's wedding one day. You know, a real bastard parent like.
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In the '88 hurricane (it was '88 wasn’t it?) the roof blew off my school and a wall fell down on the headmasters car! That was some funny shit right there!
Did I tell you about when I got stuck in a tree cycling home in a monsoon a couple of weeks ago? If I already did stop reading here...........................ok, so I left work and it was all black clouds of doom, and I thought to myself looks like rain, Im going to get fucking wet. Then off I cycled and 30 seconds later all the water fell out of the sky in a big lump. The inside of my wallet was still damp a week later. It eased off a bit to merely 'very heavy rain', and I carried on my way. Just as I was getting into Camden along the canal path there was a tree that had come over with all the branches across the path. So I had to climb through the cocking thing with my bike. I got fully covered in moss, lichen and pigeon shit, and flooded the kitchen when I got home by virtue of being really, really wet. It was quite fun in a bizarre way.
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Why do people choose to live in Florida? As far as I can gather, it's hideously hot, full of smelly swamps and dangerous reptiles, swarming with British tourists dragging their sunburnt kids round Disneyworld and gets battered by hurricanes every year. It's a bit like going to live in Greenland and moaning that it's not actually green, it's full of snow and is really boring.
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posted
Frances and Jeanne have nothing on Andrew, which I had the pleasure of living through in Miami - we were without power for a month (and my first day of high school was also delayed a month!).
During the storm was exciting though: we were huddled on and under mattresses in my house's interior hallway listening to the one weather man who had the good fortune to not have his station's tower swept up in a tornado.
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![[Frown]](frown.gif)
) When my father got home, he told us all about how windy it had been on his way and the back doors suddenly swung open and the room was filled with a gust of air and blew everything all over the living room. Our cockatiel was sucked out with the wind and hurled off into the sky. When my brother got home, my dad spun a great yarn about how as he was sucked out of the room that he could clearly see how happy the bird was and I had to agree instead of pointing out that despite beaks not being able to smile, can certainly display a good sense of terror to acompany mad useless flapping motions that do nothing to stop you being hurled into orbit.
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