Here is something I wrote back in January, I made minor changes as I learned more about storms and weather history. This is a personal account, and that I am lucky to be alive to write this.
The first time I seen
unusually strong weather was when I lived in Glenside in the late '70s. I was
about 11 years old, I was just home from school with my brother and we noticed
that the sky turned dark very quickly. The winds gradually picked up from a
normal 5 or 10 miles an hour to the point that you can hear whistling sounds
and eventually the sound turned to a freight train noise. The house literally
shook and when I looked out the living room window, I saw arcing wires outside
just from the winds that hit our house. The noise got so bad that we were
shouting in fear. When the event ended,
we wandered outside and did not see damage to our house, but we looked two
houses over and saw that a large branch from a nearby tree fell on a work van
in their driveway. A little later we
spoke to a friend who told us that there was more damage about 5 blocks away. I jump on my bike to get there and saw a huge
maple tree had fallen on top of a station wagon that was parked on the
driveway. As you can imagine, the car was heavily damaged
from this large tree.
I would like to find old records of the event, but I am absolutely sure that
this was the result of a small funnel cloud. I am sure the winds had to top 70
miles per, I have checked online and cannot find a recorded event of a EF-0 in
Glenside around 1978-1979. I think about
what happened now and how we were really lucky that this was not worse than it
was, but it seems that the mini twister followed a chaotic path, that touched
the ground then would lift up again then touch down with more force a few
blocks away.
The second event that happened to me was when I
lived in Guayaquil Ecuador (South America). I did not have internet access at time, and I
was looking for a new job. I had a
former co-worker that was one of my basic Photoshop students, he referred me to
the owner of an Ad Agency. The day I
went to the job interview was a day of
typical tropic warmth and bright but somewhat normally cloudy skies. I was hired and told when to report to the
job. (YES!) Then first day of the job
was a nightmare it was the first time I witnessed the effects of “El Niño
Southern Oscillation. I never heard
about “El Niño” before then, and that it was forming that week off the coast of
Ecuador and Peru in the Pacific Ocean. My
first day on the job and the two months that followed was a life altering
event. That day I had witnessed about four feet of water on flooded streets.
Torrential rains that looked like the clouds reached 400% relative humidity. I
only made it to work safely because I got lost driving to work. By some crazy
luck, I took higher ground. I instinctively drove to up hills and did make it
to work. When I got to work I had found the owner was on the phone speaking to
some of his employees who could not make it in, they were stranded on the
flooded roads that were shut down by high water. The crazy “Gringo” (me) and two other people made it to work that day.
After that, I was of course in shock. I
did run into more problems, the rain did not stop. I think it rained without
ending for about 4 days or more at a time. It got so bad from driving in deep
water that the brakes on my car slowly disintegrated. I then had to take the
bus to get to work for about a week. I then got my car back, new brakes I was
happy. However my car started to smell bad from flooded water that would seep
into the car. That was not the end of my troubles, I was driving home one night
and it started to rain again but this time it was much stronger than before. I
was on the final stretch of road getting near the house. I noticed that my
windshield wipers failed to clean off the glass fast enough to aid my vision. I
was driving about 30-35 mph and just started to slow down. The water on the
road started to pond, I wanted to avoid hydroplaning so I gradually slowed
down, but then the car felt like it quickly fell downward. Like the feeling you get when you
fall in a very large pothole. I could no longer see the road from the blinding
rain and dense low clouds. I guided
myself by trees and the brush lining the left edge highway divider and on the
right side was driving near a slight embankment that did not have a barrier. When
the car fell, it bottomed out violently, two things occurred. The brake line
under the car snapped off and the engine stalled from the impact. I tried to
hit the brakes and restart the vehicle but the brake pedal sank to the floor
board. I did not panic, I let the car
roll and started it, then I down shifted into second to let the engine slow the
car down to then again downshift again into first gear. At that point I was driving my VW Beetle in
first gear, (12 mpg?) my wipers were useless and no brakes. Imagine driving a car blind with no brakes.
Yes I did make it home safe, I was the only nut on that flooded road. I went through 3 sets of brake shoes, and two
headlights as they were destroyed by water. After the first rains I padded the
spark plug wires with rubber cement and the car did not fail to start after
that. At times I was driving around with about four of more inches of water
sloshing around inside the car.
I did see other weather events, 3 foot snowstorms, glancing blows from passing
hurricanes, and ice storms, but now after seeing all this I have to say that
you learn to have a great respect of the forces of nature.
