Entirely Subjective Question: Weather Joys.

[Jason Harris]

I'm curious about people's emotional memories: at what point in your life as a weather enthusiast, spotter, chaser, scientist, photographer, etc. did you experience your greatest exhiliration or appreciation that has continued to move you throughout your life?

Was it during a hail storm? Seeing your first tornado? Seeing your first wedge?
Accurately predicting a dangerous outbreak?
Correctly predicting where a tornado was going to touchdown?
Experiencing a blizzard?
Marvelling over mammatus or a striated mesocyclone?
Capturing an ultra-intense lightning sequence on film?

You get the idea. I bet some people have very vivid memories of what most profoundly moved or influenced them (perhaps to take up meterology or climatology as a career or become a spotter/chaser/photographer?)? Maybe even impacting other areas of their life too. Perhaps you have witnessed storms that inspire you in other ways or haunt your dreams.

Maybe it was a clear night sky with aurora borealis that led to a personal decision that altered your life for the better.

Sorry if this is too touch/feely, but just came to mind.

 

[Jason Harris]

And as for myself, I remember when I was three years old in Sacramento, CA I experienced a June thunderstorm, and I dragged a cardboard box onto the patio in the early night and loved the lightning and thunder, feeling both safe and involved with the storm in my portable cave there. I've had a passion for thunderstorms ever since really.

 

[David Wolfson]

Although the Worcester, MA, tornadic wall cloud was my first vivid memory, the most powerful early experience was the next year when hurricane Carol's eye crossed over our house south of Boston as a strong Cat 1 in 1954. During the eye's fifteen minute passage my parents let me walk with them outside among the debris. Then the rear wind field hit and my parents let me look out the east-facing taped-up picture window as the roaring wind snapped off and lifted away the whole top of the big maple tree by my best friend's house diagonally across the street.

 

[Dave Gallaher]

The only thing severe about this was the beauty, but in the late 1980s I was on a honeymoon in Naples, Florida, and spent an evening at a very nice outdoor restaurant with a Gulf view. We were treated to the following simultaneous views:

a full moon rising in the east;
clear skies with stars overhead;
a small thunderstorm with frequent lightning over the Gulf to the southeast;
a beautiful sunset to the west.

Further intoxicants were not required that evening...