Have you ever been in a natural disaster?

[LadyAmalthea]

One earthquake, also in Wisconsin. It shook the house but not to the point where stuff was falling off the walls or anything.

BC, I'm curious about where you used to live in WI...I wonder if it was the same earthquake I felt when I was living in northern IL. You don't have to say for privacy reasons if you don't want to, but was it around 2008-ish?

No, I left Wisconsin in 2002. It was probably in the 90s. I was a kid. My hometown is Kenosha

Oh okay! I'm familiar with Kenosha. Haven't been there in years, but my husband works there often. We're closer to Madison.

[Taffeta]

If multiple minor earthquakes count, then yes, otherwise I don't think so. We've had very severe flooding near us but not near enough to impact my neighbourhood - the river is some eight or nine miles away I think. The strongest earthquake I remember was around 5 on the scale - there have been a few more around 3 or so too. For some reason this area gets mini quakes from time to time.

[SilverLinedStars]

I had my share of hurricanes when I still lived in Florida. It's funny - people who've never experienced one all say "YAY hurricane party!!" But no one talks about the 2 weeks of no power that follow in a Florida summer... It was still an interesting experience.  When I still lived in Virginia, we had a couple of notable blizzards & I can remember that was pretty wild even though I was so young. And now in Texas I've seen a couple tornados and we had that crazy freeze a year or two ago & this summer was stupid hot. I've moved a lot and I feel like I'm making my rounds with experiences, haha.

[invaderhorizongreen]

Closet for me was a flood that tore up or road, and the road sounded like a river in the middle of the night. I used to live on a hill, that was something and the road above ours looked like it had been bombed. I was also in a glen once when a thunder storm came in, I saw lightning touch the water.

[Ponyfan]

If being caught in a severe thunderstorm that had winds strong enough to turn a semi over and watching the windshield get hit by baseball or bigger size hail counts, then yes.


Ponyfan

[Harmonie]

I've been through some minor natural disasters. Thankfully nothing really bad.

The two I'd say were the worst:

August 2016: A severe thunderstorm was on the way. Not a big deal it of itself persay. But it hit a bit harder than expected. Right after it passed over us a tornado was spotted. We think that maybe that tornado went over us. It was a very minor tornado that formed, but whatever happened, it blew down a small tree.

December 2007: The ice storm. It was a day plus of freezing rain. It's been so long, I don't remember all of the details. I do remember that the temperatures dropped below freezing long before the meteorologists expected and it then became a major ice storm. I remember the first night sleeping to a thunderstorm, but it was freezing rain. A bizarre feeling to hear thunder and rain, but it's icy.

The storm knocked out power for weeks for some. For my family, we were a little luckier, it was only a couple of days IIRC. Most significantly for us was the damage to the trees. Large branches fell all over the place and it took a while to clean them. One of our neighbors trees fell on one of our trees which fell on one of our cars. Thankfully they were smaller trees and didn't do any substantial damage.

To this day, I still remember that sound of branches snapping from the weight of the ice.

[DemonicSymphony]

I think the year that takes the cake was 2011 where I went through a severe tornado outbreak including an ef5 too close for comfort, followed by an earthquake, followed by a funnel cloud that never touched down going right overhead, followed by a hurricane.

It was, uh, a year that's for sure.

Several ice storms when I was younger.

[StarryEmerald24]

South Carolina gets hurricane season every year but it usually doesn't do much to noncoastal areas of the state. It at least hasn't damaged my area of the state in my lifetime. Edit: That I remember.

I live on a hill, so when we had historic flooding in 2015, I knew areas that were severely flooded but my yard just had a few puddles. I actually was walking around the capital just a day or two before trying to do a "Ponies Around..." kind of photoshoot in the sprinkling rain. Not many people were around so I had free roam. ^-^'

Then there are earthquakes but they are never anything bad in my area. Everything vibrates for two seconds and then that's basically it.

[BlackCurtains]

I can add another hurricane to my list. As devastating as it was/is, I got so lucky with it that it wasn't a big deal. Well, it was/is afterwards because so many things were damaged. I'm having a hard time getting my medicine refilled because the pharmacy is so backed up. Pre-Ian it took about 2-3 days but it's taking 1-2 weeks. There is still a shortage on some items in stores too. And there is still a ton of debris laying about. Lots of homes with tarps. Broken fences everywhere.

Right at this moment former hurricane Nicole is a tropical storm now and to the north of my area. It rained all night and it's windy. Apparently when it gets closer to the coast we'll get heavy thunderstorms but that won't be until later tonight. Behind it is nice cool air, so I can open the windows again.

[dragglereeka]

I experienced a pretty bad flood! It was Storm Desmond in the UK in December 2015.
I was at University at the time living in a house share in Carlisle. I was walking back from class when the storm started, the rain was flooding the streets before our eyes.
After a night of non stop rain and wind shaking the house, I looked out of the window and the whole street and ground floor was submerged. (I was on 3rd floor, thank goodness.) The river's banks had collapsed, cars floating, dead rats, Christmas decorations everywhere It was really upsetting and still haunts me to be honest.

I had to grab some clothes in a bag and be rescued via a canoe!

The whole experience was very humbling, I thought of when natural disasters have happened around the world and how grateful I was that we had aid etc. Also that it was just a rented temporary home and I could just go home to my family, whereas my neighbours had lost everything.

Now every winter I always make sure we have flooding prep just in case. It worries me that with climate change, this will happen more often.

[Shystar06]

I was there for the "October Blizzard" in Nebraska.

Our entire neighborhood was at the bottom of what we called "Deadman's hill", so called because you were indeed a dead man or woman if you went down it at speed after a severe rain or snow. We got an entire WEEK off of school which was marvelous until the tree in the yard fell toward the house. I measured 4 inches from the top branch to the front window to the living room where we had just been playing darts.

Much more recently my infant daughter slept completely through the first "Snownado" in decades. The tornado sirens went off while her grandfather was visiting and one of them is right outside our building. She slept through everything without a single peep but made sure to keep us up at night as usual!

[StarSwirl05]

Been through a few:
1. Hurricane Sandy in 2012, worst so far (3ish days without power)
2. Tropical Storm Isaias in 2020(?) (3 days without power)
3. Earthquake in 2012(?) that was located in Washington DC
4. 2nd Earthquake in 2016, though weaker than the other one
5. Severe storms at various times
6. Snowstorms at various times
7. Flooding (though none of the cases have been directly impacting where I live)

[invaderhorizongreen]

I was in the ice storm/blizzard of 1993 as a kid four feet of snow and no power for a week, we had a wood stove at least.

[brightberry]

No... not really.  I was in Texas for the 2021 snowstorm/power outage but that was less natural and more government wasn't prepared.  Other places would have been just fine.  There was an ice storm this year and we could hear tree limbs crashing all night long.  I don't think there was a tree that was spared.  Both of these incidents are really unusual for the area.

I am terrified of wildfires though!  It's one of the reasons why I don't want to move further out into more undeveloped places.

I was also in California for a small quake.  It happened in the middle of the night and I was too tired to fully experience it.

[Koudoawaia]

Was in a natural disaster two weeks ago this Friday. We had hurricane force winds here that day up to 76 mph and it caused a good amount of damage in my area but thankfully none to our house.