Years back. when I actually still took vacations... I had gone to the somewhere in the carribbean with some friends.. I honestly don't remember which island it was... and we got a great deal - -what us idiots didnt realize that it was the height of hurricane season... We arrived on a thursdat - with unbelievable humidity and the airport shutting down because of the weather... Umm - guys ya think we should leave? Nooooo it'll be fun.. Sure - famous last words...
(this might be whyt i Atdon't take vacations anymore)
We get to the hotel and check in - I think there are 20 people left in this hotel.. .the rest were brits... We went down to the beach - which wasn't that far from the hotel to huge waves... and gray skies.. .looked pretty - the pictures were cool... at some point, we headed back to the hotel to find the staff taping all the windows... and we were told that a hurricane was about an hour or two away... to go to our rooms get what we wanted and then head into the ballroom of the hotel... it was the only windowless room in the hotel.
Being good campers, we got what we wanted from our rooms, dropped it in the ballroom, and helped the staff move furniture (that woudl become projectiles) and other stuff from outside - inside, and also taped up some windows... the shoreline all of a sudden had gotten alot closer.
the 20 guests and us, along with about 10 staff members all were in the ballroom, with a very well stocked bar and a storm that raged (literally raged) around us... I love a good storm, but I've never heard anything like this before... nor since...
I dont know how long we were in the ballroom, but it was after several very good bottles of tequilla, the storm ended... we left the hotel ballroom, to palmtrees literring the lobby of the hotel... and extensive damage... but no casualties in our group...
We spent the rest of the week of our vacation helping the area get cleaned up -- we couldn't go anywhere anyhow, the power was out and hte airport was out of service.. .It was an adventure...
Probably about 10 or so years ago, I was out in the middle of nowhere, Kansas... pretty area -- probably about 90 minutes outside of Topeka.. staying with a colleague after... that night there was a tornado, we ended up spending the night in a storm shelter.. the comments about a freight train running over your head, was absolutely true.. Tornados are loud!!!
Growing up in NJ< one house my parents had was not far from the Ramapo Fauilt line, which used to rumble occassionally - never quite severa as a california quake, but a little unnerving when pictures fall off the wall...