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- Please no inappropriate usernames (remember that there may be youngsters in the room)
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- 3/17/19 UPDATE -- We've updated the permissions for our "Football" and "Commit to the G" recruiting message boards. We aim to be the best free board out there and that has not changed. We do now ask that all of you good people register as a member of our forum in order to see the sugar that is falling from our skies, so to speak.
Comments
Wow
Just re-read that and I'm still laughing at myself. Sounds like one of those "there I was in the Congo" jokes.
Anyway I should have mentioned how being uninformed, unprepared, unobservant, and just plain stuppid, can get oneself and others killed. I got a pass that day and never forgot it.
Not drastic by any means, but a little unnerving on my end.
Was living in East Cobb when the '93 "blizzard" hit. Subdivision we lived in had some steep and hilly roads. My wife at that time and I were expecting our first child. She was due at anytime and that storm rolled in. I never saw snow accumulate that fast in Georgia. We both thought it was the coolest thing we ever saw. I took a camcorder out and started recording. I was in the back yard with quarter size snowflakes flowing like I've never seen. Suddenly there was a bright flash of light and a super clap of thunder simultaneously. Lightning struck a neighbor's tree. Never heard of or experienced "thunder snow." My trail through the snow back to the house looked liked a bear went through and I'm pretty sure there was a brown stain or two left in it's wake.
Got back in the house and asked the expecting wife how she felt. All was good until I started worrying about what if she went into labor and how I or they could get her to the hospital. At the time we owned "yuppy" cars......sitting in the garage. Three days later the snow melted so we could get out of the neighborhood. I went straight to the Jeep dealership and bout a '93 Jeep Cherokee 4x4. 6 Days later my first daughter was born.......
Ghost I'm wondering if that's the same storm that I was describing in my post. I think its was known as the Storm of the Century at the time. Do you remember the month,maybe?
March 13th 1993
Lol. The day even. That could be the same one. It was like summer that morning. Then hellacious wind and snowing by lunch down here. Power out, trees down, etc
Yep 3/13/93 My daughter was born 3/23/93
In fall of 1969, I was trying to get back to Phu Bai, RVN from Dong Ba Thin (near Cam Rahm Bay). Got stuck 2 days in Danang due to a typhoon. Rained as hard as I’ve ever seen it rain for about 30 hours. They said during one 24 hour period it rained 23 inches. Soaking wet for three days. Carried a 45. Took a lot of cleaning to get it right.
6 or 7 years ago I drove out to a ministry/clinic in Aurora, Colorado for a week (a suburb of Denver). It was in February. The middle of winter. While there they had recording setting cold temps. -20 degrees. Not wind chill factor but actual air temp of 20 below. I was worried about my car engine block freezing and cracking. I had antifreeze in it but being from south Ga not enough for arctic temps like that. I had to get some radiator water out to get more antifreeze in. I had a gas siphon pump thing in the trunk for the trip. Just in case..you know tools and stuff. It was just at dark and and as soon as I handled the siphon it snapped like a Christmas candy cane. It was already so cold the rubber tube had frozen rock hard. Every breath you'd breath outside hurt because the air was so cold. I got the valve on the radiator open and drained some fluid then was able to top off with the antifreeze. Anyway my engine didn't crack thankfully. I've never experienced cold like that before or since.
Two events equally terrifying:
On Christmas Eve 1980 (?) in Chicago we had unprecedented cold. I think it was called the Polar Express. -80 wind chill, actual temp about -28.
I was working at a restaurant that night. The funny part was I thought that unbolting my battery and keeping it inside the restaurant would make a difference. The battery would have more cranking power. Nope. When I got off my shift, I discovered that the battery couldn't overcome the viscous nature of the motor oil at that temperature. And I was parked opposite several other vehicles which required me to push my vehicle out of it's spot to attempt a "jump start".
No way. The grease in the bearings was so thick, the car wouldn't budge. Too funny.
I thought of a neat story. In undergrad I took a tropical marine biology class. It was 2 weeks in the Bahamas, like Gilligan's island Bahamas. Middle of nowhere. Had to fly into an airport in George Town, take a 30min cab ride, then a 30min boat ride, to a small island with a research center. So the last night there we all go down to our boat dock to have some drinks and chill out because believe it or not we worked our tails off for 2 weeks.
So it's a beautiful night. The ocean is calm, looks like glass, zero wind, etc. However, in the horizon as far as we can see it looks like a press conference or photo shoot is going on with flash after flash after flash. It was an ocean storm as far as we can see. So from about 8pm to 11pm we hang out on the dock. The entire time this storm creeps closer and closer and closer. The dock was probably about 6-8 feet off the water below. Eventually the wind starts picking up, like way up. You see waves start to develop, then they start white-capping. We are loving it, from the safety of our dock. But then we notice our little boats tied to the dock are starting to really move. Then we start noticing that the waves are beginning to splash up through the boards of the dock from underneath. At some point logic superseded our inebriation and we decided it might not be so safe on the dock any longer. So we stumbled off back to solid land and continued to watch this wicked storm. Funny thing is, it actually never rained. Not even a drop. Just tons of wind and lightning. And has long as it took to get to us, it was over in a flash and everything went calm again. It was truly a great way to end an awesome 2 weeks in the islands.
Didn't feel dangerous or anything like that, but I remember riding in the truck with my dad when I was younger and seeing "falling stars ". Looks like rain or sleet that is burning (lit up). Coolest thing I've ever seen!
@RxDawg yeah, having lived in the SE for so many years, I've noticed how often huge clusters of thunderstorms form over the Gulf of Mexico and often don't come ashore or have much less impact when they do. Same for parts of the Southern Atlantic.
Other times, when the storms do reach land, I'm sure my neighbors from central and South Florida can describe storms that produced epoch amounts of rain.
San Diego wildfires in 2007. Absolutely the scariest thing I have ever witnessed. We lived in Escondido. Had just moved there from Athens, GA about 2 months earlier. The Santa Anna winds kicked up and a fire started somewhere and started to spread. Within about 6 hours we got the call to evacuate. We packed up what we could and got a hotel room at Camp Pendleton. I realized I forgot some valuables at the house and tried to go back. Got to the big hill right before our neighborhood and the police were turning people away. It was about 9pm and all I could see over the hill was an orange glow. I thought we just lost our house.
Got back to Camp Pendleton and in the morning we heard helicopters flying all over the place. Went outside and saw a bunch of big trees on fire about 100 yards away. I mean totally engulfed in flames. The fire was spreading tree to tree. It was crazy. Suddenly a couple of helicopters flew over with water buckets and nailed the trees and put the fire out.
Long story short, we were able to go back home a couple days later, not even sure if the house survived. Luckily it did, but everything around the neighborhood was scorched and the fences on the houses on the perimeter of the nieighborhood were all melted.
Wildfires are absolutely terrifying.