It was a nice day yesterday so I thought I would walk down our (585 foot long) driveway to meet the kids getting off the bus. When I stepped outside it seemed mild and breezy yet overcast. As I started walking down the driveway I noticed the wind picking up. By the time I got near the bottom of the driveway, I was in the middle of a blizzard! The snow was blowing so hard that I couldn't see anything around me except white and I felt like I couldn't keep my balance. I found our little bus house and leaned against it so the wind was blocked and realized that I was completely covered in snow. Just above my head I heard 2 loud cracks of thunder (which was really strange because I don't remember EVER hearing thunder in the middle of a blizzard!) A few moments later, the wind and snow died down and I could see my surroundings again. Then the bus appeared and the sun came out. I felt like I came out of a time warp or something...it was sooo strange!!! Anyone else ever have a weird weather experience?
Nothing as dramatic as your experience Netty but a few things come to mind. I remember when we had all the relatives at our house for Laura's christening and everything began to shake. We'd had a mild earthquake - now that was weird for us here in Scotland. Another incident was an electrical storm on the 1st May. I'd climbed up Arthur's Seat (a volcanic plug) in Edinburgh on a cold, clear morning for the May Day celebrations. By the time I got to the top there was lightning flashing all over and cracks of thunder rolling around the hills. No rain and very calm but strange all the same. The last thing I experienced that was a bit strange was standing in the back garden getting soaked to the skin in the rain whilst Ian was in the front garden bathing in sunshine!!!
I had something like that happen to me at work this summer. I had crossed the road to work on another garden when it started pouring rain. I rain back across the street where my helpers were working and it was sunny there! There couldn't have been more than 150 feet between us!
About 35 years ago I lived up in the Rocky Mountains west of Denver in the little town of Evergreen. Wonderful place, sort of a hippy village for the older bunch In January, 1972 we experienced a windstorm that some weather people on TV said was caused by the Jet Stream dropping down into the middle of the Rockies. Some weather reporting stations lost equipment when the winds were clocked at almost 190 miles per hour. Don't know how strong they were where we lived but the windows on the front of the house were bowing in and out for several hours. Think of winds like in Hurricane Katrina pounding you for several hours. Pretty scary day, thankfully no damage to our house because we on a mountain slope and angled in a way that kept us safer than others.
My, Netty, that's the sort of thing one remembers. Sounds scary! We've got turncoat weather in my area, and sometimes three seasons in one day. A sunny day here is either a sunny morning or a sunny afternoon. We're kind of used to it, and rarely think about it unless it's really extreme. Your experience sounds extreme. There are at least three zones from town to the stables, with us in the middle. That's over a distance of approximately 20 km - 12,5 miles. Town can have heavy fog and drizzles, we can have overcast but dry, and the horses frolic in the sunshine.
When i lived in Pittsburgh, Pa,,, we used to get ThunderSnow. it would snow like crazy but above it you could see the lightning flashes thru the clouds an hear it just rumbling above. the lightning never came thru, we could just see the light of it.. here in Lofoten, the first summer i was here it snowed in july, an as i was told that is kind of rare, it does happen now an then, only to be sunny within hours. when i lived in Gulf Shores, Alabama, we used to get rain on one side of the street an sunshine on the other, then when the rain would move to the opposite side of the street you would see all the people move to the side that had just rained on,, coz it would be almost dry by then,,,, and when i lived in Rapid City, South Dakota, we had one heck of a snow storm, that just ripped thru the city an landed us with over 18 inches of snow in less than 2 hours,, only to be wearing shorts by afternoon because it was in the 80's but with large snow piles on the sides of the roads,,
That sounds like a really freaky little storm, Netty! Both of my folks were from Pittsburgh, Biita, I remember several thundersnow storms when we visited my grandparents.
Netty, that is so bizarre! I experienced thunder once when it was snowing and it just seemed so WRONG! :-D
When I was in the Navy, I was stationed at Brunswick Maine for 3 years. In 1975 in the spring, like March or so, I was up in the mountains near Canada at the survival school where I taught. The one night we had fog so bad, you couldn't see 2 ft in front of your face. Early the next morning there was a cold front came through, before the fog cleared out. So the fog froze on everything. The trees all looked like they were coated with very fine lace. The sun started to come up and it turned the frost to gold. Guess who didn't have a camera with them! Of course those were the days of film cameras only!
Freaky weather!! I also had a weird experience not too long ago. I was working in a small rural town that, at that time only had one tarred road running through it. I was sent to do a preliminary study before we started designing the road so as to decide where in the town the roads would be required and used to the benefit of all towns people. Since it was only a prelim I took my family with. We got there, they decided to stay in the van since it was hot and the van had airconditioning. Since I had to work I got out of the van, did some work and walked down two dusty roads and decided to get back to the van. I get back to the van and my family asks me: "why aren't you wet, it just stormed here" - only then I looked up to the sky and saw the heavy cloud, but when I looked on the ground it was dry and dusty. And to think it must have happened since the van was damp and the leaves on the trees.
