Best Storm Stories

On Monday, February 9, 2015 at 11:42:24 AM UTC-7, Bill D wrote:
On Monday, February 9, 2015 at 10:21:03 AM UTC-7, JJ Sinclair wrote:
With storms pounding both coasts, I thought it would be fun to tell out best (worst) storm story. I'll kick it off with my favorite. 1950's, old JJ was a boom operator on a tanker crew and we were on a refueling mission over Colorado. There was a big thunderstorm between us and the rendezvous point. The newly formed USAF was not to be stopped by any weather, latter on LeMay decreed that "No peacetime mission required penetrating a thunderstorm", but in 1953 we charged right on in! The cloud turned a pale green, except when lightning struck, then everything turned red! Vertical gusts were unreal, everyone tightened up their straps and hung on. As the props de-iced, some of it would hit the fuselage and it was like being inside a drum with someone beating on it with a bat! After about 5 minutes of this, the AC screamed; Navigator, should we keep going or turn around? In a calm voice, the Navigator replied, I don't know, sir, the hail just knocked out my radar!
I believe the Navigator was the only one on the crew that wasn't scared ****less!
We finally flew out the other side and then made a precautionary landing at Denver. I can still see the big hole in the ray dome and a good 10 inches of ice built up on the little stub antennas.
OK, Who's next?
JJ

Back in the early 1960's I was working with Paul MacCready's company Meteorology Research. Inc on a cloud seeding project near Flagstaff, AZ. This involved flying light airplanes such as C-180's and Twin Commanders into CB's to dump silver iodide and dry ice pellets and then to collect things like cloud particles and measure electric fields.

One of the big concerns was that our cloud seeding might inadvertently generate a big hailstorm doing immense damage to the surrounding area. Paul was particularly concerned about that.

Being a young idiot among a few similar inclined young geeks, we hit upon a practical joke. We had a large freezer where we kept hailstones found after storms. We also had some chemically pure H2O. The idea was to super-cool the H2O and then repeatedly dip the end of a string into it forming an ice-ball much as one makes a candle. Once the ice-ball reached a sufficiently terrifying size - about 8" dia. - we used the shop band saw to cut it in half revealing very hail-stone like layers. We then showed this to Paul and his fellow scientists at the 'appropriate' time. When we saw the reaction was getting totally out of hand, we were forced to reveal our subterfuge. I don't think some ever forgave us.

I was a grad student at NAU in Flagstaff at the time. We never saw any huge hail, but one day after the seeding we did get hail piled 6" - 8" deep all around the place. If I remember it was Vince Schaefer who had a big hand in the experiments.