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| Blogs > wickedeasy > wicked and that ain't so easy |
it's not nice to fool mother nature
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it's not nice to fool mother nature quick survey of the post storm debris and most of my neighbors escaped major damage.... some branches, a fence blown over, and sink holes in the park. which brings me to my question so you have a favorite mother nature moment? here's one of mine when we were little, our family vacationed in Bridgeton Maine every summer for two weeks on a small but lovely lake with very few cabins. we had electricity (sometimes) but no potable water so we had to get water from a well with a pump.......it was so cool. when it finally came out, we would stand with our mouths agape and slurp the frigid water until our bellies ached. the lake was a source of constant change. loons at dusk, bats just before sunrise, like a mirror oen minute and then rippling the next.... one year, we had an enormous thunder and lightning storm......the kind that reminds you of just how vulnerable you are. we sat in the living space with a fire burning and listened to the wind, the cracking of the tree branches, the thunder making us jump in a sort of gleeful fear while momma gave us marshmallows to roast and we sang songs to fire light and candles....keeping the demons at bay. the storm raged on and on circling the lake with occasional strikes right into the water....stunningly beautiful. at one point, i headed to the bathroom to get rid of all the cool-aid i'd had and just as i finished and stood, a terrifying clap of thunder sent me running back to the family. and the bathroom lit up, a giant cracking sound and the toilet bowl exploded. we'd been hit!! mayday mayday for the rest of the week, we did as the bears do....... and lived happily on the meal of our near disaster, discussing it endlessly. our last day, as we were packing up, the owners arrived with a new toilet. and my dad poked me and said......wait til next year. delicious so..........yours? You cannot conceive the many without the one. |
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THunder & lightning are such awesome displays of nature's power, it is hard to bet them. Watching storms off in the distance, at night, such that you can see the cloud to cloud discharges and the various ground strokes and see the whole of the storm. OH MY. Or flying on a red-eye over a massive storm cell (if you don't mind the bump-bump-bumppity bump) and seeing the flashes (muted by the clouds) ... I've watched out the window for over an hour on flights. In 1966, it started snowing on a February Sunday morning, and did not stop snowing till Friday. Not that continuous snow was not new, but the intensity of that snow was. I was a Junior in HS at the time, in all of my prior 11 years, we'd never had a snow day, but we got a SNOW WEEK off. Every day, the neighborhood crew would gather to do the necessary shoveling out for each other's houses and driveways, then we'd go play. At one point the drifts were high enough to cover over the roofs of some single story homes. Ah the adventure. We knew school wasn't going to open so we could stay out far later and roam far wider. In hindsight, those massive storms seem to come every 10 years or so. Chas
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I don't think I can top an exploding toilet bowl! I suppose one of my most memorable weather moments was when I was out on a night ride with my bike club and we got caught in the middle of a thunderstorm/tornado. We were about 3 miles from getting back to the ride start when the big wind hit. It was dark but I could see leaves whirling by in the light of our headlights. The woman in front of me screamed and started wavering on her bike. Impatient, I passed her. I figured it was just a bad thunderstorm and let's just put our heads down and get back to the parking lot. So...I put my head down and rode...got to a stoplight, stopped and looked behind me and all of my compadres had disappeared, lol (found out later that they pulled off the road and ran into a church for shelter). The wind was really picking up at that point and I got a little scared and decided I had better take shelter too...ran up to a Dairy Queen and pleaded with the teenage staff to let me in (they had locked their door because it kept flying open in the wind). Shortly after that, the power went out, so there I am in a dark Dairy Queen with four teenagers...totally drenched...I'm sure they were thinking I was a crazy lady. Eventually the storm let up a little so I decided to go for it - the last two miles were interesting to say the least; at one point I rode through several inches of standing water on a block that was flooded. Everyone on the ride survived and we were all reminded that it's a good idea to carry a cell phone and have the numbers of other people in club, for an event like that where people were scattered and stranded across a wide area.   
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3/1/2010 7:06 pm |
summer between my freshman and sophmore year in high school...camping on the Washington coast near Kalaloch. We'd been hiking in the rain forest. It had started raining while we hiked so we hurried back to the campsite, which was on the bluff overlooking the ocean. I remember standing there watching the storm...waves and wind and rain...I don't think there was thunder and lightning - we don't get that much here - but I do remember feeling very very insignificant. I wrote an essay for my english class that fall about that storm...I got an A because the teacher said she could close her eyes and feel that storm. Wish I'd kept that paper...  Glad you are all safe! hugs, ce  "All you'll get from strangers is surface pleasantry or indifference. Only someone who loves you will criticize you." - Judith Crist, crack film critic
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Lightning--the stuff of stories; eh, we? I worked at Sequoia NP about 40 years back. I was down at the maintenance building in Giant Forest to grab some things. It was a pretty dark afternoon--late spring/early summer (end of May, as I recall)--and the newly arrived storm had started packin' up some hefty thunderheads over the ridges. I had walked from the truck and was a few feet from the man-door when the bolt let loose. A huge flash of light bounced off the metal siding... and an explosion of sound and static about the level of a low-yield nuclear device caught me by the top of my head and threw me flat on my face... on the ground. As I tried to exhaust the air in my lungs to rid my nose of the smell of ozone, I rolled onto my side and saw these tiny meteor-like flickers falling everywhere. They were all around the horizon--east to west and north to south. The were overhead. They got closer and I could make them out--matchsticks. Flaming matchsticks. It took a few seconds to shake off the blast. I oriented myself and looked in the general direction of where I felt the blast had originated from... and saw dozens of pieces of kindling a-blaze. My eyes scanned upward along the trunk of a redwood, which was probably about 6 feet in diameter and maybe 50 yards away; up to the top. There was no top. The bolt had taken about 40 feet of the tree and turned it into a million shards of flame. I managed to gather my senses and got up and headed over to the truck to radio in to dispatch. The dispatcher asked if it was raining. "Well, no. It ain't raining anything but for flaming matchsticks." "You hurt?" "Not that I can tell... uh... negative!" He said he'd contact the patrol ranger in that sector and for me to stay on air. I heard the radio traffic ensue between the continuous flashes of light... blah blah... skeeerkkk--- baaaaah blah... skkkwweeerrskk--blah blaaah... The dispatcher coded me and I replied. And I hear... "They say it's raining up the main road about 3/4 mile. It oughta be your way in a few minutes. Since you ain't hurt--Don't worry about it. Dispatch... clear." Okey dokey. Well, by this time I had regained most of my normal self-composure and decided to get the stuff I had come for; which I did. Got in the truck and headed out for the work-site. (Neither sleet nor hail nor dead of night kinda thing...) It was raining (rain) when I drove off; and the park didn't burn down. I gotta say, though... I learned to give wide berth to trees and metal buildings when storms are brewin'. And from your experience (I can learn from others, too)--toilets!  Solar...
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Great story, WE. Exploding toilet?! Can't match your experience. I was in a pretty wild-assed thunderstorm in Maine--not the last time I was there--another time. I was driving from Machias south to Gouldsboro to get some wine at Bartlett's Winery. A bit scary, but mostly spectacular. The scariest thunderstorm I was in, was when I was driving from Chattanooga, Tennessee, through Alabama, to Meridian, Mississippi. It was afternoon and the sky was ink black, darker than night. I had to pull over to the side of the highway at one point; the wind was really rocking my truck. I heard what could have been a tornado--couldn't see it because it was far too dark, but it was LOUD. I've been through 3 hurricanes. I was almost 7 during Alicia, so I don't really remember that one so well. I was in Port Arthur during Rita (the scariest hurricane I'd been through by far) and Houston during Ike. Been through numerous tropical storms and floods. None of those hurricanes/storms were as scary as that drive through Alabama. John Lee Hooker Recommended: [blog lucyjane78]
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3/10/2010 1:55 am |
I have a lot of memorable nature experiences.... the first time I saw hail ( aged 9) , the first time I saw snow ( aged 20) , the flooding of outback rivers when I was 7 after it hadnt rained in almost a year, being caught in a lightning storm on a mountain slope in the Himalayas, a blizard in New York, three tropical cyclones ( hurricanes ) , and then there was the Great Thaw the occured when the most frigid woman I ever met .... Recent post: [post 2369941]
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