posted
Never really been caught in any major storms, and slept through the hurricanes (despite a tree falling onto the sheds opposite my house).
One time, though, I was driving back home from work, and a fog decended that had me completely lost, I ended up wandering around until I found tower bridge and then finally worked out where I was when I got to some part of New Cross. I live in SW london and was working in NW london, so I was pretty lost.
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grant
when you're surrounded and outnumbered, there's only one way out.
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quote:Originally posted by Vogon Poetess: 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.
There are 50 states in the union, and this one is by far the weirdest.
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grant
when you're surrounded and outnumbered, there's only one way out.
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quote:Originally posted by rooster: 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!).
Oh, yeah. After Frances, we were without power for two weeks. It's the refrigerator that makes it baaad. You can eat really well for a day or so as *everyone* defrosts *everything* in their freezers. Then the lust for popsicles sets in.
Andrew was about as bad as it gets -- although I have a friend whose brother lost his house in Ivan in the Panhandle. Brick house. Wound up in two piles, one 400 feet and one 600 feet away.
quote: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.
Yeah, the during-the-storm was kind of fun for Frances -- I peeked out the mail slot at the horizontal rain, watched the trees falling.
There was a loud moaning in the night at the worst of it. Freaked me out -- then I realized it was the front door, vibrating like a clarinet reed. Which freaked me out in a whole different way.
It did that for Jeanne, too, but by then we were too tired and fed up to much care. At least the lights came on a couple days after that one.
posted
Pah! Pathetic whiners. You should've seen Norman. It blew over the newspaper sign outside Mr Punjani's. The Coach and Horses had to take the umbrellas off the tables in the beer garden. I closed the bathroom window because it slammed quite hard and the glass might've smashed had it happened again.
quote:Originally posted by grant: Wound up in two piles, one 400 feet and one 600 feet away.
This one is by far the most unfortunate; that's gotta hurt.
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grant
when you're surrounded and outnumbered, there's only one way out.
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quote:Originally posted by statist:
quote:Originally posted by grant: Wound up in two piles, one 400 feet and one 600 feet away.
This one is by far the most unfortunate; that's gotta hurt.
Well, the funny part is that
1. all the neighbors thought they'd stayed there, instead of evacuating to Tallahassee, and
2. That family runs one of the krewes for the Mobile, AL Mardi Gras, and had just gotten that year's shipment of beads in.
So when they returned to see the damage, they kept getting greeted by people bedecked in colored beads (utility workers, FEMA investigators, neighbors, *everybody* was wearing them -- they were hanging off all the trees, too) who burst into tears saying, "You... you're not dead!"
I just like the image of power line guys working among the fallen trees wearing Mardi Gras beads.
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posted
Sorry. I don't even remember making that post. But in analysis, I was probably referring to piles as in haemorrhoids. And therein making a rather pathetic attempt to be amusing.
[ 25.06.2005, 05:36: Message edited by: statist ]
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grant
when you're surrounded and outnumbered, there's only one way out.
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I never thought of piles as being numbered -- next thing you know, you're giving them names....
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quote:Originally posted by MiscellaneousFiles: Storm stories, that's what I'm after
I don't really remember many decent storms, except one when I'd come home from Brownies and after about 20 minutes we all looked up and noticed that there was nothing outside the window except grey, with rain flying horizontally across the garden. My Dad went to investigate. Flung the window open, stuck his head out, looked both ways, and announced loudly to the world that "it's raining". In case anyone outside had failed to notice.
posted
Last night Croydon got thumped in the face by a series of massive storms. Living on the top floor of a tower block with floor to ceiling windows along the whole length of the flat meant the view was pretty good. It was a bit like being Storm out of X-Men.
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quote:Originally posted by Vogon Poetess: It was a bit like being Storm out of X-Men.
This says a lot about your imagination. I confessed to Uber the other day as we trekking along a stony walk that sometimes I like to pretend I am a small man in my head controlling a 50ft robot Mikee that is crushing buildings (blades of grass) and she looked at me like I had said something stupid.
Last night it suddenly hurled a massive skip of water up the street and it was so strong we could hear the raing hitting the roof of the pub. Or the pub roof is really thin. It's one of the two. It were dead atmospheric like.
quote:Originally posted by New Way Of Decay: she looked at me like I had said something stupid.
Actually I was doing the math to see if the ratios worked out. If your head is a tenth of the size of your body then that would be anatomically correct. Then I wondered if perhaps you were actually a 5.2 inch tom thumb inside the head of a 5ft 2 inch Mikee.
posted
I'm pretty sure a bolt of lightning struck something in the street outside our flat last night. In the second wave of storms, there was suddenly a huge flash right outside, accompanied by a crash which sounded more like an explosion than a thunderclap. Very dramatic.
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posted
The lightening was gorgeous last night, I had a Vogon-type view being 9 floors up and I watched the storm for ages from the balcony. Didn't see anything damaged though. The air was lovely when I took the dog out for a walk later, it had that delicious "summer rain" smell.
posted
Mmm, could be. One of the nearby trees is split, with half of it hanging off - although the trunk's not blackened at all. Is this likely to be the result of the lightning strike we saw yesterday evening?
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posted
This is a horribly sad story. 13-year-old kid hit by lightning last Friday. Dead.
Tragedy compounded by this bland, throwaway line from the headmaster of the lad's school:
"Education psychologists and other support will be in school today for anyone who needs it."
"...and how do you feel about Gary's death?"
*sniff* *sob*
"...and how does that make you feel?"
*shudder* *wail*
"...and why do you think that is?"
How about someone telling them what to do if they're out in a fucking thunderstorm?
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scrawny
One Mojito, two Gin and Tonics, Three Bacardi Lime Sodas, and a couple of pints of Stella please.
posted
My friend's house got hit last Friday. Everything that was plugged in and on at the time got fried. Really scary actually, a couple of the plugs melted. *shudder*
According to the nice man at the insurance company, if you're standing next to a microwave that's turned on when lightning strikes your power supply, the surge in power is enough to blow the bloody door off, causing pain and death. Think about it next time you're too lazy to cook properly. :sternface:
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posted
Cor! Your friend doesnt live in Wimbledon do they? My friends house was hit and the neighbours tv blew out. he has an exciting scortch mark down the front of his house.
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posted
I'm really confused though because when it use to thunderstorm, my dad would make us unplug everything and sit in the dark until it ended. This is standard practice right? We'd all sit together on the settee and the only light in the room would be the lightning. I thought this was standard practice but people are just a bit more gung-ho. The only time actually he didn't make his own impression I had broken something by tampering was when his house was struck by lightning and his pc went *kaputt* whilst I was house sitting for him. I was nervous as hell, but he shrugged and said 'it happens, we're insured for it'
posted
My family's Thunderstorm Plan involved nothing more than simply unplugging TV aerial cables from the wall sockets. I always thought was a bit dodgy. Surely the last thing you want to do in such a situation is put your hand on plug that directly connects you to a big metal thing sticking out of your roof.
Seeing as you don't look like a dolphin to me Misc, I can only deduce that he wanted to kill you. Did he stick tin foil onto the bottom of your plimsoles?
[ 30.06.2005, 09:40: Message edited by: New Way Of Decay ]
posted
Oh, I forgot to mention I could caught in a quickly passing storm recently when out delivering papers a few roads down from my house. I knew the lightning was pretty close, but got quite a shock when it hit the road twenty yards ahead of me. I heard the crack as it landed, was rather creepy. It was then that i decided that standing in the middle of a storm with lightning conductor-trolley was not advisable, and pegged it.
And we used to have fun in our Guide hut when the rain came down. The rain on the tin roof was really loud, but one day we had hail. The tin was so bad that we couldn't even talk to each other properly. If we needed a message delivered to the entire unit at once (all 9 of us), someone would shout in my ear, and I (as the Guide with the best oggy) would bellow round the entire unit. This worked really well, providing everyone squashed as close together as was possible. Was quite fun really. I miss our Guide unit
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