What's the strongest force of nature you've ever witnessed/survived?

[spurdo]

Was a kid when the 2004 tsunami hit Thailand. We were inland and safe, but it was a crazy vacation

[cheeseNmills]

location: Netherlands

Dude, your whole country is one general contractor's low-bid away from being under 20 meters of water, you don't need a hurricane to be scared!

lol, somewhat true. It has happened twice before but we've won back our land from the ocean every time. The Dutch are very ingenious when it comes to water management.

[SoutheastBeast1]

Tornadoes

[~Hades~]

Tornadoes

these without a doubt

[Quickstrike]

Probably those farts one time after eating "Olean" pringles.

I don't know how I still have an anus...

[Pinot]

It was 8/8 trample

[Gatamane]

Obama... soon.jpg

[cheeseNmills]

Bumping for more riveting tales.

[FearTheEngineer]

I volunteer on an emergency communications team that responds to severe weather and natural disasters, so I've seen quite a few tornadoes, was on a two week deployment helping with hurricane Sandy relief, and a whole lot of severe thunderstorms, but I'll share a couple incidents that stood out to me the most...

Was patrolling during a cluster of supercells (they send us out to look for cars off the road, downed power lines, tree fallen on a building, etc) and right as I was driving past a power relay station, lightning struck a transformer. There was an enormous boom, a flash of light and sparks came down across my truck... I had a new volunteer with me who started freaking out about how he didn't want to get hit by lightning, I've been doing this a while longer so I was thinking "great, when I get home tonight there's going to be no power"

Another time we were in the field observing the updraft of a storm, we watched the funnel cloud form and descend and as we're watching this tornado touch down, it's sucking rain into itself so by the time it's on the ground, the tornado is completely rain-wrapped and no one can see it. And it was at the intersection of two major highways. Not a great situation, that!

And last story... Monitoring a potentially tornadic storm, driving on the highway with a lot of people who don't know how to drive in the rain, and there's a sudden really hard burst of wind that makes a two-story ladder come loose from a service van. So this ladder is spinning on the highway, and as it's spinning, it's extending, and cars are going crazy swerving in all directions to get out of the way of this ladder...

[RealAesthetic]

just one, but it was a pretty brutal one. My most scary moment against nature was probably swimming in southern Spain in a rough sea. There was a really strong current going away from shore and I got caught in a cycle of almost getting to shore and then getting pulled underwater and all the way back into the sea whenever a wave came in.

I literally spent what felt like 30 minutes trying to get out of the water until a huge wage came and literally picked me up and threw me into shallow water.Scared me chitless and actually thought I was going to drown when the waves disoriented me.

The strange thing was that there was an old man who looked to be around 70 who kept going into the ocean and then slamming back onto shore. He would laugh at his wife and then repeat the same thing like 5 times in a row. He eventually drifted off coast and got picked up by a lifeguard on a jetski.

[Aftiel]

i was in the same room as a full grown pit bull once

somehow managed to escape with my life