Are you Weather Phobic??

[Bob Schafer]

This is BS (20%? 20%????? That would be close to 60 million people in this country alone....BS), but you might enjoy reading it anyway...

http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2006/07/07/w...w01-101-ae-0000

Bob

 

[Joe Nield]

I'm a recovered (fantastically, you could say) severe weather phobic. The very incident that got me into weather, a tornado encounter in Illinois when I was 5, motivated me to start reading everything I could on weather. I read so much about how destructive and deadly storms could be, that I became terrified of them. It got to the point that, if it was overcast and breezy, I was convinced a tornado was going to come kill us all.

It is amazing what kind of connections a young mind makes. Does anyone remember the scene in the Wizard of Oz just before the tornado takes place, where they show a brief clip of crepuscular rays? Yep, you guessed it. I became convinced that these were tornado precursors.

This fear became crippling by the time I was 8, and my parents sought counseling. To this day I don't know how it worked, but it did. 16 years later, I'm a meteorologist and chaser.

Go figure, eh? :lol:

 

[Aric Cylkowski]

I love the symptoms from the article. Heart pounding, constantly monitoring TV weather reports, and an inability to sleep or eat and changing their schedules days ahead at the possibility of bad weather sounds like the precursors to an outbreak chase to me .

 

[Matthew Havin]

As a kid, the only weather-related things that ever scared me were:

1. Lightning
2. Swiftly moving bodies of water of unknown depth

Tornadoes, high winds, hail, and everything else I used to laugh excitedly at with giant bug eyes.

Now that I am an adult, I realize my childhood fears were correct, since those two are bigger killers than tornadoes.

 

[Robert Dewey]

I'm a recovered (fantastically, you could say) severe weather phobic. The very incident that got me into weather, a tornado encounter in Illinois when I was 5, motivated me to start reading everything I could on weather. I read so much about how destructive and deadly storms could be, that I became terrified of them. It got to the point that, if it was overcast and breezy, I was convinced a tornado was going to come kill us all.
[/b]

Interesting... It was the MI derecho of 1991 that made me severe weather phobic (at the age of 6). I was in the same boat as you, when it would get humid, overcast, and a little breezy -- I was also convinced that "tornadoes" were coming (at the age of 6, I believe the derecho straight line winds to be a tornado, heh). It got to the point that I had to have TWC on almost 24 hours a day ... Gladly, that all changed by the age of 8 or so, and my hate became a love. Odd.

 

[Andrew Khan]

Yes, well....I used to be a long time ago, fortunatlly, I changed..and lets hope for the better. I used to be terrified of every little storm that came through, just small pulse storms. Even now-a-days I have some what of a fear of night time chasing...just to much pressure. But the events that got me into the position of where I'm at now, was the Major Tornado Outbreak in East Tennessee May 18, 1995.......and The Nashville Tornado Outbreak of 1998...here are links to both events, if your curious.

http://www.srh.noaa.gov/mrx/research/May18tor/may18tor.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nashville_Tornado_of_1998

 

[Angie Norris]

Yes, well....I used to be a long time ago, fortunatlly, I changed..and lets hope for the better. I used to be terrified of every little storm that came through, just small pulse storms. Even now-a-days I have some what of a fear of night time chasing...just to much pressure. But the events that got me into the position of where I'm at now, was the Major Tornado Outbreak in East Tennessee May 18, 1995.......and The Nashville Tornado Outbreak of 1998...here are links to both events, if your curious.

http://www.srh.noaa.gov/mrx/research/May18tor/may18tor.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nashville_Tornado_of_1998
[/b]

1995...my first chase season
I remember May 18th...baseball size hail at my house. I was out in the yard waiting for the storm to come through and my young one was in the house with the TV and Roboto, yelling the warnings out the window. The tornado warning for our county came out, and the next thing I see is my parents pulling in the driveway. My dad said "we thought you might be scared, so we just dropped by"...(translation...my mom was scared s***less, so she's coming over to make MY life miserable). So...in the house, do the tornado drill to the bathroom. My kid knew I was beyond p***ed off, so he opened the door so the cat could "escape". I had to retrieve the cat, so I excused myself to "save" the cat...just in time for the hail . After the storm, it was out to the yard to gather some good hailstones and have a game of dodge hail.
The historical nader nerd in me just looked up the storm report for that day...16 states, 702 events reported, 139 hail reports and 81 tornado reports. I didn't realize the event was THAT large, so now it's off to the library and find the charts for the day
I don't think I've ever been afraid of storms. I gave up night chasing for a while because of driving into a flash flood one time, but I think I'm over that now, if the little "interception" up in Moore a few weeks ago is any indication.

 

[samuel stone]

Unlike most on here who say they once had a phobia and then it changed to interest, I as far as I can remember have never been afriad of any form of severe weather, I mean I used to stand out in charshing lightning and thunder and wind/horizontal rain at age 7. I dont know why but unlike most thunder has never scared me just perked an interest.

FYI, I think that lighting we be my undoing because I fear it so little that I am sure to get struck sooner or later.

ummmmmmm... I think I am for for the first time scared of lightning, after just predicting my death in the sentence above I had a long moment of staring at the computer screen and then came to the decision that after several close encounters (i.e. haveing lightnig strike a powerpoll 20 yards away then having a dream that night that lightning struck me and killed me) I should be more careful.

 

[Josh Morgerman]

If people here suffer from any weather-related pscyhological issue, I would say it's a weather fetish.

 

[Dick McGowan]

I think my mother is one of these people. When we lived in Garden City, KS when I was young, she used to move my sister and I into the basement, for every little freak storm. She had the candles, the battery operated radios, canned food, basically anything that one would need to survive an atomic bomb. I remember back in April of 1990/1991, a tornado was coming right for GCK, visible from the southwest part of town, and she about fainted when she saw it. Of course she survived the 1966 Topeka tornado which leveled my grandfather's pharmacy. That might have something to do with those fears..