What was your scariest weather related experience?

1. While driving to California from Mississippi, we got caught in a huge desert storm somewhere in Arizona (or possibly New Mexico). There was a lot of rain and wind but it started off normally enough. After about five minutes though it started getting crazy. The dirt and sand was so dry that all of the water coming down was kicking it up more than soaking it, so after a few minutes both sides of the road were completely hidden by dust going up about 30 feet, and then above that was just rain, with the freeway cutting through it. It looked like Moses parting the sea except it was a freeway parting a giant dust cloud. So that was kind of neat, but then it got intense - every time lightning flashed, you could see into the dust clouds, and there were multiple tornadoes/dust devils on each side of us. Deciding to take shelter, we pulled into a motel that was ahead of us and ran into the lobby along with about four other people who had come off the road. Just as we were getting into the lobby the storm really took off and we started getting hail too. One guy slipped in the parking lot and started bleeding everywhere and me and my husband had to dash outside to literally drag him into the building. Then us, the guy, the others from the road, and about 6 people from the hotel including the staff just huddled in the lobby watching the security camera feed from outside on their desk computer. One by one, the cameras were getting taken out by hail or wind until eventually it was all just static and howling wind and dust outside the windows. Was like something from a disaster movie, I'll never forget it.
   — ZombieBisque


2. I was living by myself when Hurricane Charley went through Florida. I was huddled in my house with a candle (Power had gone out) just listening to a hellish maelstrom shake my old wood house. At one point I got up and peeked out the window. There was strange green flashes going off all over. I realized they were power transformers exploding.
   — BlorfMonger


3. I was at work one day when one of the regulars comes in and says 'man, the sky looks crazy'. I go to check it out - and the sky looks ANGRY. Boiling stormclouds, etc. I figure it will probably miss us, since it's about 5-8 miles off, and storms tend to miss us. After a couple minutes, it becomes clear that it won't. Meanwhile, as the storm approached, the sunlight had begun to change color. The light became yellow-ish, then green, as the wind picked up. Rubbish begins blowing across the parking lot as we are ll gathered at the front of the building, watching this airborne Armageddon approach. The doors start to shake a little, and then one begins to open due to the air pressure differential and wind. Luckily, one of the guys catches it, and I move over to lock and bolt the door. After about 15-20 minutes of almost complete darkness and pounding rain, it tailed off into almost nothing. But especially when I saw the light change to sickly yellow outside, I was convinced we were going to get hit by a tornado.
   — brockhopper






4. I'm from rural North Dakota and 10 years ago we had a blizzard that trapped my family and I into our home for 4 days. We had snow drifts 8 feet high, negative 30 degree weather and we lived 15 miles from town. It's pretty typical for ND. It wasn't scary for me and my three siblings, we had a blast. My brother and I had a great time jumping off our roof into drifts and making tunnels through our yard. What makes this scary? My parents didn't tell us until we were adults, but there was only two days worth of food in the house. My parents didn't eat anything for four days to make sure my siblings and I were fed. We couldn't figure out why my mom cried when the roads finally opened up. Now I understand it was tears of relief. My parents are good people and they sacrificed for us. If you can, go hug your mom.
   — TheRovingSpirit


5. There was a huge storm that my dad and I were watching while standing in the garage with the garage door open. Finally, the storm got so intense that the power went out while the garage door was still open. My Dad (whose jokes are sometimes in poor taste) just put his hand over his mouth and said "Oh shit...". Me, as a 10 year old, said "What? What?!". My dad said "the power went out and the garage is still open...". He sounded worried, so I frantically asked why that mattered. He simply said "well...it creates a negative pressure causing the house to explode". I started crying and ran to find my mom. He thought it was hilarious.
   — thebrowntown12


6. I was in middle school and had some sort of after school event. It was late January and it had been lightly snowing all day and really cloudy. I called my mom with the phone at the school to let her know I was done. I was sitting outside leaning on a bike rack while waiting for her to show up. I then hear thunder crack. I had never even heard of thunder blizzards before but I experienced one that day. In the course of maybe 5 minutes a fog rolled in, the snow got super heavy, the wind began blowing hard, and lightening and thunder was going off every few seconds. I moved away from the bike racks and into a small alcove to get out of the cold wind. After maybe 30 seconds from leaving the bike rack lightening stuck the bike rack I had just been leaning against. That day was the most scared I've ever been from a storm. Growing up in the midwest thunder storms and blizzards are common so I wasn't afraid of them, but both at the same time, combined with lightening striking where I had just been really got to me.
   — swanyMcswan






7. When I was 11 one summer it was just my 2 sisters and me home when a tornado came. We lived in the country so no alarms to hear. It was a thunderstorm that just kept getting worse and darker. We knew we had problems when in the middle of the worst part of the storm - ALL the wind died, like someone literally flipped a switch. I looked to the highest point of some trees and could see the highest leaves sitting still. A few moments later we could start to hear the distance sound of what sounded like a train, but no railroad tracks anywhere near. That is the sign of a tornado. We hauled ass into the basement, freaking out. We could see the tornado come across some farm fields, into out next door neighbors back yard where it picked up a barrel, and as it came toward our place, it hopped our house, tore the antenna off, but no other damage.
   — GKinslayer


8. Walking home from a friend's house and nearly got hit by lightning. The bolt was really thick, bright, and loud and I could taste the burning air. I'd say it struck about 400 feet behind my house.
   — XxsquirrelxX


9. May 3 1999 tornados in Oklahoma City. I was 4. I think it's my first clear memory. Mom was kind of scared because my dad was in the Air Force and had been flying that day and wasn't home yet. Neighbors were chuckling and drinking wine in their driveway looking at the sky??? While their dog was flipping out. Eventually my dad got home but then my parents were having a big argument because my dad said we should leave and drive as far as we could but my mom thought we should stay. We ended up staying. We were in the bathroom (middle of the house). My mom had my sister and I put on our bicycle helmets in case any of the ceiling fell or caved in. We had the tv on in the bedroom loud enough so we could hear it and we had a crank radio. The guys on the radio described the path of the tornado and said it was going to turn and head straight for the area where our neighborhood was. Weather man on the tv said something to the effect of "if you are not underground you will not survive." I vividly remember hearing that. It was terrifying. They were almost hysterical on the radio. Very nervous and talking fast. They made a mistake with the directions and the tornado turned a different way (they accidentally said north instead of south or whatever). So we didn't get hit at all. No damage more than trash all over our lawn. My grandparents house down the road had some damage though. Their whole 6ft wooden fence was torn down and a freaking billboard hit their house where their bedroom closet was. Edit: Wikipedia article for [these tornados](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1999_Oklahoma_tornado_outbreak) if anyone is interested Edit 2: This is the specific [tornado](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1999_Bridge_Creek–Moore_tornado) that I'm talking about
   — BilliardHitchhiker






10. Microburst winds in a thunderstorm. I knew the storm was coming, so I ran to my neighbors house to make sure her dog was away (he was). As I turned to run back, the wind came out of nowhere, and in the few hundred feet I ran home, 6 or 7 trees and large branches came down all around me in a matter of seconds. One huge branch missed me by about 10 ft. The sound of the rush of wind, then cracking and crashing of trees is something I’ll never forget.
    — redo33


11. Woke up one morning to my dog barking for breakfast, I hadn’t slept well so I was kinda in a daze and went out into our screen room and gave her a bowl of food, took me a second to come online but when I did I noticed it was dark as fuck outside and there was loud whooshing noise all around me, it was like standing in a wind tunnel. I looked over at my dog and she was freaking out in the corner but refused to leave her food, took me a second of yelling to convince her to abandon the kibble but once things cleared up I turned on the news and realized a tornado had basically gone right over my house. Short version I fed my dog outside in the middle of a small tornado
    — Nyu727