What is the worst weather you experienced while travelling?
How did it effect your trip?
When we were in Cuba we spent 3 days in our hotel room with an X taped to the window watching the hurricane news updates on TV.
Reply to this The worst storm I ever saw happened when we were in Illinois, in a very small farm.
We were staying on top of the barn with a gigantic barn-door but no glass or screening on it.
The thunders were so strong that the barn was shaking. You could see a curtain of water pouring down and it was such a fantastic view over the corn fields that Dax and I went to slide on the mud under the heavy rain!!!...it was good fun until I cut my foot with a stone!!!. The storm only lasted one day really, but it was so cool that I remember it every time I hear a thunder!!!
It was tornado season and we were under alert, but no tornado came close to us...I must admit I was a bit disappointed because I have never experienced a tornado and being in "tornado-land" I wanted to see one, as I was told the air went kind of green and it smell "funny"...after seeing the news and realizing we didn't have a shelter to hide in I was slapped back to reality and relieve that it didn't happen!!!
Reply to this There are two instances of 'nasty' weather that stand out from my travels. Both happened in the Antarctic.
One was a monster storm that rolled in on the katabatic winds from the interior of the icy continent. I was spending the winter at McMurdo Station on the cost of Antarctica and it had been pitch black for three months or so. I was outside 'playing' when the storm went to 'condition 1', which is the most severe weather condition. The winds were gusting to 83 miles and hour and I was leaning into the wind and attempting to dig my feet into the icy surface I was standing on. The whiteout was nearly complete, so I only got occasional glimpses of the building I was standing less than ten feet away from. I stood out there for nearly half an hour while the storm roared around me - I was in heaven. Eventually my goggles and face coverings iced up so that I could no longer see or breath freely and I struggled inside, but it was the Antarctic experience I had been hoping for. The storm raged for two days shaking and rattling the buildings and filling the air with a deep, wind-born roar. I got to venture outside on several occasions to get food or take in the weather. When it was all over the station was buried under twenty feet of snow. It took us two entire days to dig all of the vehicles and buildings out of the snow drifts, but it was a lot of fun.
The second storm of note happened while I was sailing across the Southern Ocean on the bark Europa from South Georgia to Tristan da Cunha. We had about two days warning that we were going to cross paths with the storm, so we got everything prepared on deck and braced ourselves for a wild ride. The full might of the storm force 9 gale hit us after dark, which lent an amazing atmosphere to the wild weather. There were huge waves crashing over the boat's deck in explosions of white foam. The wind was screaming through the rigging and the deck was pitching wildly as the mountainous waves rolled past us. The sky was fairly clear and the full moon shed a magical light across the amazing seascape of inky black, aqueous mountains, some approaching 30+ feet in height. Excluding the crew, there were only three of us on deck, tied to the safety lines, taking in the amazing tempest. Everyone else was wedged into their bunks holding on for their lives. What a magical night it was.
I love stormy weather, so I do my best to travel to places known for wild storms at the time of year the storms are most common.
Keith
Reply to this When I lived in Russia the temperature fell to minus 20 in the winter. It was tough (an acquaintance of mine saw hallucinations) but I didn't think it was nasty - as long as you wrapped up properly it was perfect with all the beautiful snow!
Reply to this Looks like the Antarctic would be a good place to spend Christmas, Keith.
I am always disapppointed when we have yet another not white Christmas here in Germany. :D
Mel
Reply to this If you are looking for a white Christmas then Antarctica certainly qualifies and apparently it is a great party - The only problem for me is that the sun never sets that time of year and there are no trees or fires to roast chestnuts on (though I have never actually roasted a chestnut on an open fire).
Keith
Reply to this Climbing Mt. Fuji during a Typhoon is probably the nastiest weather I've had while traveling. Of course, we had never climbed Fuji before, so we didn't know that the massive gusts of wind and spatterings of sideways rain in our faces was unusual. After literally almost being blown off the side of the mountain, my friend offered up her meal (twice) on the side of the mountain during our trek.
This was also all between 9pm and midnight, and then 2 am to 5:30 am (after a quick spell at one of the cabins) because we were planning on catching the sun rising over Tokyo from the glorious top of the renowned Mount Fuji. Naturally, this wasn't the case as it's quite difficult to see the sun through typhoon rain clouds. Even the workers who live at the summit during hiking season called us crazy for hiking during a typhoon. Well that was the first we had heard that we were hiking in one. Didn't make the trek back down any easier either.
Good news is we caught the fast train from Fuji to Chiba (on the coast) and caught the tail-end of a typhoon swell to surf for the next 3 days during clear skies. It all works out if you keep your spirits up. ;-)
Reply to this I have two good (different) ones: first, I was in Moscow during the European heatwave of a few years back and it was 104 degrees and so incredibly miserably hot that you couldn't be outside at all, and you couldn't be inside as people were dying in their apartments, because Moscow just doesn't normally need airconditioning (see above, its more likely to be well below freezing), so they don't have any. The city was completely unable to cope and of course, walking around the city sightseeing was an exercise in dehydration and futility.
Second, and this is recent, I stayed a night in a place in Mississippi which is know for its collection of old corregated tin 'sharecropper' shacks. Unfortunately, the area became very weather unstable and a 8 hour set of thunderstorms was unleashed due to the atmospheric issues... and if this wasn't bad enough, there were flash floods (8 inches of rain in a short period), a 65+ mph windsheer and finally, after starting at about midnight, there were tornados everywhere, and the news, which kept going in and out kept telling me to get in my 'safe' area. I found there were zero 'safe' places from a tornado in a tin shack. The flooding was so bad that it actually flooded my car, but all the shacks made it with virtually zero pieces of corregated metal flying through the air wizard of oz style. 😊.
Unfortunately others weren't so lucky, as people died in the storm, as many do when tornados hit at night. Ya can't see 'em coming. The next morning, all was calm, very wet, but a completely blue sunny day, like the sky was trying to pretend it didn't do a thing last night. The weather has been crazy in the deep south and nearby states this year and I believe they are very close to making it to the most tornadoey year on record, and its only the beginning of June.
Reply to this Oh, I remember that European heatwave, Jessica.
It was certainly nasty here because it caused huge spiders. There were ones as big as the ones I saw in Thailand in our house here in Germany. They even scared my boyfriend, who usually handles the spider situations. :D
Reply to this I definitely didn't see those! Too much vodka at the time maybe--its all we could think to do 😊
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