Before you take a Dirtnap...Follow

Mom called from Cincinnati and was all exctied. Seems she was awakened this morning at 5:30 with a "fairly strong" shaking of her townhouse. Lucky ***** got to experience a frigging earthquake.

That got me thinking of things I want to experience before or during my inevitable dirtnap...

1.) Earthquake - I don't need a 9.3 on the richter scale, Just maybe a 5 or so. Enough to recognize immediately what it was.

2.) Tornado - I so want to see one from a distance, with it moving away from me. I want it to be big and I want it to travel through a mobile home park and electrical transformer station.

There are other things but work is getting busy...

I'd suggest watching "Dante's Peak" and "Twister".

Was lucky enough to see one, although not on the scale you have listed. It was perhaps an F-1 to F-2 and in its strong stage. It was traveling through mostly bare land about a mile north of where I was standing. As most do in this area it was traveling east so I was in no danger. We watched it cross a highway and rapidly dissipate.

It was impressive to say the least, television and pictures cannot really capture the true scale of these things.

I cannot fathom the sight of the F-5 class, although I did pull guard duty in Moore, Oklahoma after the May 3rd 1999 tornado and became very familiar with the destructive potential.


Edit:

As for the earthquake, I can say I would mark it down as another kick-*** experience.

As much as seeing a tornado was awe-inspiring, I would have to think that living through an earthquake would seem very humbling, a reminder that things very much larger than yourself are at play and could give a pile of bat-sh*t about what you think about it all.


Edited, Apr 18th 2008 12:58pm by Loushen

We've had some rare mini-quakes on the East coast a few time.... all that I remember was a few knick-knacks falling off the shelves..

I have been around two tornado's NOT the larger mid-west one's by any means... Once I was younger.. the clouds were a sickly ***** green.... There were pieces of roof stuck in the trees...

The other time was more recently.... Driving down I-95... I basically see a wall of blackness up ahead and swarms of floating leaves.... like everywhere.. just floating and filling the sky aimlessly.. it was calm and creepy.... The actual tornado was a few miles to the left of the Highway.... When we got under that cloud cover.... the entire (Rush Hour) highway had to either stop or slow to about 5MPH.... You couldn't see ****... It was like driving though a car wash.

After I came out the other side.. into clear blue skies.... you could look back and it looked like a nuclear bomb was exploding in the distance.. It was the strangest shaping out clouds.. mostly because it was just "there" this black blob in the middle of semi-normal clouds.

I had the biggest grin the whole time.

I live just east of St. Louis and felt the quake pretty strongly, but it wasn't exactly a frightening quake, so yeah, it made it pretty high on the "Oh hey, that's cool" scale. I've also been in the shadow of an F3 twister (I think) near Cameron texas. It touched down just a few hundred feet from the locker room we were in prior to the football game that night. We ended up playing the game back at home the following Saturday, but that was probably one of the most frightening encounters with a violent storm I've ever experienced. Imagine being stuck in a primarily concrete locker room with 40 or so half-naked high school boys and a raging tornado outside.

As for other things I'd like to experience before I kick the bucket - I'd like to be in a hurricane and witness a monster wave or two. I was recently reading about Ghost Tree out in California and though I've never had a desire to surf, that sounds like it can be a pretty awesome place.

Hurricane Fran apparently ripped the roof off the house I currently live in. I wasn't here then, so yay for me!

Edited, Apr 21st 2008 5:12am by Tare

Wow lots of comments on the hurricane. I concur that I wouldn't want one to strike near where I lived. I merely would like to experience the awesome power of nature that comes with them. I've always been drawn to water / the ocean and I've seen absolute calm first hand - I'd like to see the other end of the spectrum first hand some day. I don't think it is any more significant than that, really.

I'm not a thrill seeker, and I don't understand people who want to experience those types of things. I've been through earthquakes, and it sucks. Adversity is something you deal with, not something you seek out for kicks.