Hurricanes???

princess-pickle

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Hurricane Dean hitting Mexico has made me wonder...
How many of you (on the forum) have experienced a hurricane?
What's it actually like?

I've never been in the same country as one before, living in Wales and all,
are they common in some countries?
Just wondered!
 

catsarebetter

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I experienced one in DC a few years back, but of course, it was very very mild compared to what it came off the coast as. It was however, strong enough that they shut the metro system down, and it was really cool to watch (my nephew and I stood out on the balcony for the longest time) until the siding that we were watching being ripped off the buildings almost hit our balcony, then we amended our "this is really cool" to "hmm, maybe we shouldn't be standing out here..."
 
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princess-pickle

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Is there a lot of thunder? Or is it just strong winds?
 

worriedmommy

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I was in the middle of Hurricane Alicia back in 1983. I was young and it was terrifying. I remember helping tape up our windows and putting all outside things in the garage to prepare. Our roof had a lot of shingles ripped off it and there was junk blown every where. Thankfully besides some trees being knocked over and losing power for awhile the damage could have been a lot worse. In the middle of the storm we could not see a foot outside. There was so much junk in the air and the wind was so strong it just howled and things constantly were hitting against the windows. We had only moved to the area a year before...what a welcome gift, huh?
 
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princess-pickle

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That sounds terrible!
Did you have any cats then?
(I can't imagine Pickle in a hurricane!)
 

lsulover

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I have been through hurricanes my whole life.

I have always lived in Louisiana and Mississippi.

Luckily we have always lived far enough inland so we didn't have to evacuate.

The worst was two years ago during Hurricane Katrina. Even though we live a good ways inland it was still very bad here. Katrina was a Catogory 5 which is the strongest kind there is.

We had no power for 6 days, Katrina wiped out power for all of South Mississippi. We always have our hurricane foods ready.

The kind of weather we always get is like a very very very bad storm. There is lots of lightning, lots of thunder, lots of heavy heavy heavy wind. This will last for hours and hours.

It is very very very scary sometimes. It is also very scary for friends that know I live in Mississippi, after Katrina I had lots of my internet friends trying to get in touch with me to find out if we were ok. Once some of them did, they got in touch with my other friends.

I would not wish a hurricane on my worst enemy.
 
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princess-pickle

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Hurricane Katrina was all over the news here in Wales, it looked really windy on the pictures...Glad your O.K!!!
 

catsarebetter

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I can't even imagine being in a category 5, but having been in the middle of the one I saw... it was like standing in the middle of a massive, powerful, unleashable force of nature and feeling extremely insignificant... have you ever been close to a lightening strike? You know how you get that charge in the air that causes your skin to tingle and the hair on your arms to stand on end? It's like that, only continuous. It was really quite awesome, but I'm totally fascinated by storms and natural phenomenon (sp).
 

catgirl2548m

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Originally Posted by Princess-Pickle

Hurricane Katrina was all over the news here in Wales, it looked really windy on the pictures...Glad your O.K!!!
hey, pickle, u know the air force flies airplanes right into hurricans to measure the wind and stuff. the hurrican hunters! they rock!!!
 

MoochNNoodles

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I've been through 2 of them. Neither were really bad ones. In the last one DH and I stayed with my parents after securing things in our house. At one point a neighbor came over to let us know the siding on one side of the house was coming off. (It always does in bad storms on that particular section.) When we were outside looking at it I was standing by a tree and the roots of it were moving the ground i was standing on. A few minutes later half that tree came down. Then a few months later my the other half came down. My parents were debating what to do with it, but in the end they left it. Today it's growing back actually! If the base wasn't so big, you wouldn't know something like that had happened. It just looked ridiculous in the meantime! I didn't think it would regrow from the little branches that were left. I thought they should have leveled the top part out and attached one of those nice big bird feeders. There are 2 evergreens next to it, so it would have been really nice for the birdies!
 

momofmany

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Coolcat (Rigel) lives on the Yucatan peninsula and just went thru hurricane Dean this morning. He has been texting members on this forum to let us know that he is OK, but without electricity right now.

I've been through a tornado but never a hurricane.
 

babygirl

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I went through a few. The worst one was in 1992 when Hurricane Andrew a category 5 (165 mph) hit South Florida. The city of Miami dodge a huge bullet because Andrew (was expected to make landfall in South Miami) wobbled a little to the south and came in through Homestead and Florida city. That was the worst Hurricane to hit the US before Katrina.

In 2004 we went through Hurricane Frances a high category 2 and Hurricane Jeanne a category 3. In 2005 we went through Katrina when she was just a cat 1. The eye went over my house, it was the first time I was in the eye. It was scary, but 2 months later we get hit by Wilma a category 3. Wow, I thought Andrew was bad, but Andrew's eye never went over my house. Wilma's eye was 100 miles long so the eye went over the city of Miami and Ft. Lauderdale. It was crazy, the house vibrating and the roof was making so much noise, I honestly thought that I was going to lose my roof. The worst part was afterwards when the gas stations didn't have generators and everyone wanted to fuel up. We spent 8 hours trying to get gas, 6 hours for ONE bag of ice and 2 weeks without power in 90 degree weather.
I'm just glad Dean didn't come this way, I don't want to go through another hurricane.
 

babygirl

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Originally Posted by LSULOVER

I have been through hurricanes my whole life.

I have always lived in Louisiana and Mississippi.

Luckily we have always lived far enough inland so we didn't have to evacuate.

The worst was two years ago during Hurricane Katrina. Even though we live a good ways inland it was still very bad here. Katrina was a Catogory 5 which is the strongest kind there is.

We had no power for 6 days, Katrina wiped out power for all of South Mississippi. We always have our hurricane foods ready.

The kind of weather we always get is like a very very very bad storm. There is lots of lightning, lots of thunder, lots of heavy heavy heavy wind. This will last for hours and hours.

It is very very very scary sometimes. It is also very scary for friends that know I live in Mississippi, after Katrina I had lots of my internet friends trying to get in touch with me to find out if we were ok. Once some of them did, they got in touch with my other friends.

I would not wish a hurricane on my worst enemy.
Katrina was a category 4, I believe it was downgraded to a category 3 a few months later. Hurricane Andrew was the last category 5 to hit the US in 1992. It was a category 4, but years later it was upgraded to a category 5.
 

snosrap5

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I've lived in Florida most of my life, we've gone through so many hurricanes that I couldn't begin to name them. Opal, Ivan, George and of course Katrina are the most memorable ones.

Ivan left us with no power for little over a week. It ripped the roof off of my parents business and shut them down for over a month.

At our house we boarded up and lived in the living room during the storm. We took the mattress off of our beds and brought them into the living room. Shut all interior doors and honestly tried to sleep or played games.

Imagine 9 cats, 3 dogs, 3 boys, 1 wife and a frustrated husband all in one room.
You could hear the house breathing and the roof creaking as the wind would get up under the eaves and in the attic but otherwise we felt very safe.

The lightning to me isn't bad it's the wind. When it starts to howl I begin to worry.
 
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princess-pickle

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Don't know about you, but I'm fascinated by storms and natural disasters!
 

cattybird

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I've been through several since Wilmington, NC is "HURRICANE ALLEY!" Though in the past three or four years we've been lucky and haven't had that many, none so far this year. Maybe Hurricanes have found another "ALLEY!"
 

stacyd1987

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I've went through every hurricane that's ever hit Melbourne, FL since 1988. It's kind of fun for me because I'm a thrill seeker sometimes. No, I've never went to the beach in the middle of one. That's downright suicide! Crazy surfer dudes...
The three that hit Orlando a few years ago, Jeanne, Frances and Ivan, were the best and hardest! We had no power a week after each one and then after we got power back, another came right after it! I made a lot of money from tips when I was working at a local Burger King. We were practically the only food restaurant open with running water, hot food and toilets!
Best thing i could do was cheer up my customers, even for a bit and give them what they wanted. The line was so bad that people had to wait for 45 minutes to just get to the register.
A few weeks after those three when everything was starting to calm down a bit, I started noticing we had a few guys from an out of state power company truck stop by almost every night. But these guys weren't the typical saviors that everyone thought of, these guys were downright idiots on wheels. First of all, they bounced their power company truck that had hundreds of dollars of equipment on it like it was a pimp car. And I mean by bounced it by its front end going 2-4 feet in the air! They did that for about 3 days before they pulled the last straw when they threw a GLASS beer bottle at my window! Thank goodness it was closed but the glass was everywhere in the drive-through! I got their license number and called the company on them. They got fired that evening and I never saw them again.

There was one time when I was a kid that a category 2 came right over our house. The eye was still intact and it was sooo eerie! The eye is like a calm day in the midst of chaos but it only lasts for so long before the hurricane walls come up to you. And the inner walls are the strongest part of the storm! But since it was only a cat-2, it was nothing.

When you've been through so many, you get a feel of how bad the storm is really going to be when it hits you. Most Floridians are like that but there are still a few nuts out there that get in BIG trouble when they underestimate the storm's power! Especially those that ignore a state's evacuation order.
 

babygirl

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Originally Posted by StacyD1987

I've went through every hurricane that's ever hit Melbourne, FL since 1988. It's kind of fun for me because I'm a thrill seeker sometimes. No, I've never went to the beach in the middle of one. That's downright suicide! Crazy surfer dudes...
The three that hit Orlando a few years ago, Jeanne, Frances and Ivan, were the best and hardest! We had no power a week after each one and then after we got power back, another came right after it! I made a lot of money from tips when I was working at a local Burger King. We were practically the only food restaurant open with running water, hot food and toilets!
Best thing i could do was cheer up my customers, even for a bit and give them what they wanted. The line was so bad that people had to wait for 45 minutes to just get to the register.
A few weeks after those three when everything was starting to calm down a bit, I started noticing we had a few guys from an out of state power company truck stop by almost every night. But these guys weren't the typical saviors that everyone thought of, these guys were downright idiots on wheels. First of all, they bounced their power company truck that had hundreds of dollars of equipment on it like it was a pimp car. And I mean by bounced it by its front end going 2-4 feet in the air! They did that for about 3 days before they pulled the last straw when they threw a GLASS beer bottle at my window! Thank goodness it was closed but the glass was everywhere in the drive-through! I got their license number and called the company on them. They got fired that evening and I never saw them again.

There was one time when I was a kid that a category 2 came right over our house. The eye was still intact and it was sooo eerie! The eye is like a calm day in the midst of chaos but it only lasts for so long before the hurricane walls come up to you. And the inner walls are the strongest part of the storm! But since it was only a cat-2, it was nothing.

When you've been through so many, you get a feel of how bad the storm is really going to be when it hits you. Most Floridians are like that but there are still a few nuts out there that get in BIG trouble when they underestimate the storm's power! Especially those that ignore a state's evacuation order.
The three hurricanes that hit Orlando were Charley, Frances and Jeanne. Ivan went to the Florida panhandle.
 
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