What is your most memorable storm?

I won't forget the rainstorm that hovered over our little corner of the Outer Banks and dropped 14 inches over the course of a day.

And then the tropical storm came the next day.

With two feet of water in our driveway -- complete with fish -- we were hostages in our own rental house. I have pictures of our neighbors who waded out to the store (a mile away) for toilet paper and beer.

I also fondly remember Hurricane Gloria, which wasn't that horrible. But she was bad enough to close New York City schools, which as you NYC'ers know never happens. The water rushed down our street in Staten Island, where we sat on the bottom of two hills and watched water rush right down into our front yard.

 

1. Katrina 2005, Gulfport, Miss.

2. When I was a kid, we lived in Kentucky for two or three of the worst winters on record in the late 1970s. My first year there, we went to county schools and missed 35 days of school because of snow. Seven weeks of school. (We truly had cabin fever. Never woulda thought you could get that tired of snow forts.) They had five snow-days built into the schedule, the governor pardoned five more and we went one Saturday trying to make it up before they realized nobody was going to come and it would kill enrollment (and federal $$$), so we went to school damn near all summer. Or at least that's what it seemed like.

 

Winter; (some of you may remember this story I shared)

We get a bunch of freezing rain, followed by ice, wind.......just a mess.
Don't know why, but I took a different route to work, come upon a wreck, and to make a long story short, find out that a lady gets out of her vehicle to help a stranded motorist, was in the path of an on-coming semi that was skidding on the ice, and never saw her.

 

New Year's Day, 1999.

I'm at work, it starts snowing about 4 in the afternoon. By the time I leave at midnight, there's 10 inches of snow and it's still coming down. I have no idea how I made it home without getting stuck, because the city and the DOT decided to run minimum plow service until the snow stopped.

14 inches of snow on the ground by the next morning, and winds are kicking up about 40 mph. Apartment manager decides, what the hell, we'll just plow the lot tomorrow. I finally dig my car out to get into work, and then when I get there I'm fielding circulation calls from pissed-off people who didn't understand how hard it was to deliver papers to the rural areas in the worst snowstorm in the last 10 years.

 

Same thing happened to me my senior year of high school. We'd had several years of relatively storm-free winters, so they only built one snow day into the calendar. In fucking New Jersey. Geniuses.
Well, from MLK Day (when we got a snowstorm on the holiday, then temps that didn't get above 10 degrees the rest of the week, making the entire city an ice rink) to about mid-March we had one week without a day off for weather. They pulled us in on President's Day, canceled an off-day for a teacher workshop and added about a week to the school year. We were supposed to graduate on June 13, which was early for us. We ended up graduating on June 22, which was as late as I can remember the school year ending.

 

Isabel by any measure. 3am wakeup with water in the living room. Violent windy waves smashing the front of the house. I waded out over former lawn in strangely warm water to secure a boat. All hell had broken. A Mad River canoe was crashing against a chain link fence. A formerly trailered runabout was bashing against a neighbor's house along with fire wood logs and a picnic table and anything floatable. The Saturn station wagon floated sideways -total loss. Everything was dark and strangely silent despite hurricane winds. I was in a functional daze. I secured the canoe (I don't know why it mattered) and pushed it into the flooded greenhouse as if glass was going to be a haven ( the water was so high it bashed glass panes but the glass held along with a sliding glass door in an outbuilding. I went back into the house and watched brackish water rise over rugs and books polished floors (anything brackish/salt waters touch are lost ie all electrical wiring, wells, pumps, and floors and joists). Despite howling winds and direct waves out of the east bashing and rocking the house I was strangely fascinated with the water rise in the kitchen. It was that preoccupation that helped me get a semblance of order when it started falling. Dawn's calm finally exposed the hellish destruction. By then I had lost interest, and I never took any pictures. The sailboat that I waded out in stomach-deep water to resecure at 3AM hung by wave-shreaded threads (it is a 19 ft boat and was secured by ridiculously oversized 5/8" dock lines which were disintegrated- if you are in any hurricane situation, use chain). Prior to Isabel, our neighborhood was cocky and vibrant. Post Isabel I would paint it in greyish tones; it never recovered.

 

One night, one town, seven tornadoes.

http://www.gitwisters.com/

 

That second one must have been the end of January '78 blizzard. I remember it well as that Saturday (1/28) was my sister's wedding. It was kind of dicey whether things were going forward but everything went without a hitch, climbing over and through snow drifts notwithstanding.

 

Forgot to give (dis)honorable mention to one that happened a few weeks ago. All the street and town names changed to reflect how pissed I was AND to protect what little anonymity I have left.

I drove all the way down to Booger's Woods (not the real name of the town, obviously) to umpire a game. The directions I had were HORRENDOUS. It said to turn on Buttmuch Street. OK, fine, I do that. But it said nothing about Buttmuch Street becoming Butterflied Penis Blvd. or having to turn left to stay on Buttmunch Street.

After finally ending up in Looserville, I finally figure this shit out on my own and backtrack. After driving around for what seems like forever, I finally realize that I should have 1) turned left to stay on Buttmunch Street, 2) looked for Shit's Creek Avenue and made a left, then 3) make a RIGHT onto Stink Tush Drive to the Shitstain Community Center.

I finally get there 15 minutes after the game was supposed to have started and ... nothing's happening. The field the teams I'm supposed to umpire is being used by a machine pitch game. That game finally ends, then the teams head over to that field. The home team takes the field to start warming up, but dark clouds are ominously hovering overhead. As the team starts its warmups, the home coach and I both notice lightning. He says, "my rule is, we don't play in lightning." I agree and we pull the teams off.

Just in the nick of time. A few minutes later, it rains, hails and in general soaks the area in horrendous downpours that quickly soak people outside to the bone. When I finally made it to my car about half an hour later, I'm beyond drenched and it feels like I walked through a river to get to my car. I drove all the way home to get into some dry clothes before driving back out to County Seat (which itself was a long drive after driving ridiculously long distances to get to this field) to cover a game.

The next day, I send the directions I cobbled together by getting lost to my supervisor. Two days later, the sports office sends out the revised directions. All I have are the memories of getting soaked. At least I got paid a little bit for driving myself all the way down to that field.