Deadly weather.

[rhipsher]

I was born and raised in earthquake country and experienced the big one in 1989the during the world series of the Oakland A's and the San Francisco giants. It was big. And in Texas Hurricane Ike. Three years after I moved to Texas I experienced my first tornado. And buddy they don't play around. This on was an F3 in Cedar park Texas. I remember telling a guy at work that day I said you know I hear about baseball size hail and tornados and I haven't seen sheet yet. 10 minutes later I noticed that outside the windows that it was getting as dark as night. And a coworker said you want to see a tornado? Come out here and look at this. I remember how humid and still the air was when I walked outside. Just weird feeling and sure enough. There it was in the sky. When it hit the ground it didn't look big. But when I saw it knock a rail car off the tracks we all knew it was time to take cover. It was coming right toward us. About 13 of us crawled into concrete drainage pipes going under the street. As it went over us I remember taking off my hat and put it over my face for protection. The wind was blowing so hard and rocks were flying through the tunnel. Once it had passed we crawled out and it looked like a bomb hit all the windows were gone in our vehicles. There were 13 holes in the roof of our shop. Cars flipped over. Total destruction. And then it headed right for a subdivision called butter cup creek and this guy video tapped it. One person die in it. But what's strange is that it didnt look that bad. Even on this video. Never under estimate mother nature.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=09COikvb9Ow&feature=youtube_gdata_player

[John Boothby]

Glad you made it through ok! Mother nature can be a "B...." some time! I really feel sorry for people caught up in natural disasters! I've lived through earthquakes in California and typhoons in Okinawa. Not fun!!

[FU]

Never under estimate mother nature.

You can say that again !

[rhipsher]

It was the first time in my life that I wasnt sure wether I was gonna make it or not. I was excited to see my first tornado but I didn't want to be in it. Hahaha!

[Blue Flame Restorations]

I lived in Dallas back in 80-81. We had baseball to softball size hail. It destroyed all the cars, knocked out windows and just plain beat the crap out of everything. Amazing.

[jimmy b.]

Hi Rick, I lived in the Houston area from '78 to '83 and I can remember leaving
town quite a few times for hurricanes. During a hail storm my neighbor had a
brand new T-Bird that had small round dents on the entire flat surfaces but
didn't break any windows. He never got it fixed just collected the insurance
money. It looked pretty neat.

Does it still flood real fast down there, one year during a tropical storm I had
a '65 corvette that I had to drive into my apartment complex with the 2
right side wheels on the curb just to keep one of the exhaust out of the water
until I got to one of the higher parking lots. I think I drove about an 1/8 of
a mile on that curb. And with a few curves I didn't even run off the curb till
I got to the lot. I got a lot of good memories of my time in Texas, good friends
good food and lots of cold beer.:cheers:

This past year here in New Jersey we had hurricane Irene, a month later we
had a tropical storm that flooded everything again, then over a month later
we had a freak snow storm that just devastated the area again. I'm still
cleaning up the mess. But you are so right NEVER under estimate mother
nature...jimmy

[rhipsher]

It still does every now and then. But since Hurricane Ike its been pretty uneventful. But that's a good thing. Lol! I lived in Austin from 94 to 2000 then moved to Katy which is west of houston. When you lived in houston katy was nothing but rice fields. Now its a thriving city with huge estate home. See what happened in the 1980-90's allot of people from California moved out here with their companies and sold their little 1200 sq ft POS houses for $350-$450k back in Cali and realized they could buy huge custom homes here with 3 car garages for $100k. Hell they brought 2 or 3 of them. Paid cash. They were in hog heaven. They would have never had that their entire lives in California.
Everybody back in Cali kept telling me that I'll be back. Well its been 17 years and Im still here. Im never going back. I married a Texas woman. My kids were born here. All there friends are here. Why would I ever want to move back to the left coast for. Ain't happening.

[jimmy b.]

After 5 yrs my wife and I got kinda homesick ya know the 4 seasons, family, a
business venture that didn't pan out etc, etc. We now say we should have
stayed. Maybe thats why we never sold our lot in West Columbia Tx.

I'd like to come down next year to check on the property, this year going to
Georgia to see my daughter. She started a new job this past year so we are
going down to see her and see the area. She lives in Valdosta, I hear they
have a drag strip in town.:)

[FU]

Valdosta is the home of South Georgia Corvette and Aaron Scott one of the masters of the ZR1-LT5 trade.