Hurricane Irene in the Caribbean in, what, 2011? Luckily we were tucked up safely in a hotel with a concrete structure but it still scared the crap out of us.

We thought our windows and patio door were going to blow out and we used all the bedding and towels to stop water coming in under the door. It soaked up so much water that we couldn’t lift them in the morning.

Thankfully I think it dropped to a cat 2 (?) as it hit land, so damage wasn’t as bad as expected. Still, our hearts broke when we saw the damage to the island and homes as we returned to the airport a few days later. I don’t know how the locals deal with it every year.

The 2019 Memorial Day tornado outbreak. Less than a week away from the 5 year anniversary of it.

My apartment is located roughly 500 feet (152 meters) from the end point of an EF4 tornado that hit and about 1500 feet (~450 meters) of the start point of an EF3 tornado that hit. One ended and the other began within minutes of each other.

I recall I looked out of my front door and could only see the sideways winds. I had just woken up after sleeping all day because I was tired, having stayed up late the night before, burying my cat which had eaten mouse poison, which I was unaware of the symptoms for until it was too late. I had to bury my cat a second time then next day and broke my hand in frustration while doing it.

My power was out for 10 days and I had no water for 6 days. I didn’t own a car and public transportation had halted in my area from trees blocking the roads. I walked 4.5 miles to a nearby Urgent Care for my hand but they had closed due to damage. From there I walked 9 miles to the nearest hospital. They had too many people. I gave up waiting to be seen after 8 hours and went home, then wrapped my hand with bandages myself, around an old brace I had from a previous unrelated broken wrist.

When my power came back, I learned that a power surge had fried the power supply of my computer. I eventually managed to check my email at the community college, which is when I learned my health insurance coverage through Medicaid had ended, thanks to an order from the president at the time.

My absentee landlord never checked on the building. Less than a month later, the in-wall A/C unit fell out of the wall, leaving a hole large enough for me, a 6’3" 250 lb man, to easily crawl through. It was there for 6 months before it was repaired by the landlords maintenance person, who bought a cheap window unit A/C and stuck it in the hole then filled in around it with expanding foam.

The hole was ‘fixed’ around the same time I was able to buy a replacement power supply for my computer. My data storage drive had also stopped working and I learned an important lesson regarding backups. That was right around Christmas time.

Unrelated to the tornados, that’s about when I started passing kidney stones. I tried to go to the hospital for them but without insurance, they turned me away. It wasn’t considered an emergency. I missed several days of work while I passed them at home. Work said because of the amount of time I missed, I needed a doctors note to return to work. Work would schedule me 6 hour shifts, 6 days a week, which comes to 36 hours. Employees needed 40 hours a week to be considered full time and to qualify for the company insurance. Without insurance, I couldn’t find a doctor who would see me. I was terminated and the reason they listed was that I abandoned my job.

My official last day with the company was 31 December 2019. I was ready to start a new year. 2019 had not been kind to me. I remember thinking to myself on New Years Day “At least 2020 can’t possibly be worse, right?”

Hurricane Katrina

Loma Prieta earthquake.

American Northeast - Blizzard of 1996 It snowed for days! School was closed for a week. Then unseasonably warm weather melted the tons of snow and the river flooded. As if being 13 wasn’t difficult enough, that was quite a year

Florida. Need I say more?

I was on a camping trip in Panama, and because there’s no service in the jungle, didn’t know that a hurricane was coming. I rode out hurricane David in a tent on the side of a mountain.

Surprisingly I’m no longer a fan of camping.

Poland

I live in New York, so natural disasters are pretty rare other than the random hurricane, though I have experienced about four earthquakes (though mild) in my lifetime, and once a tornado came through my neighborhood.

2003 Canberra bushfires. My little city was made to burn.

2019 Black Summer bushfires - see: whole fucking country either on fire or enveloped in smoke. I owned a tonne of masks before Covid hit.

We’ve been lucky in the last few bushfires seasons since but it won’t last.

Hurricane Harvey was a bastard of a storm.

I was up all hours of the night for days on end keeping tabs on the flood control reservoir at the end of my street only a few houses away, it got dangerously close to overflowing but fortunately never did.

Craziest thing, I remember being inside my house in the middle of the day all dark no power, and I hear the unmistakable sound of a military helicopter getting closer and closer and suddenly the house was starting to shake. I ran outside and looked up and there was a Blackhawk hovering no higher than 50 meters directly above my house and a soldier poking their head out the side looking straight down, I swear we made eye contact it was so close. Fucking wild.

I’ve been through some significant droughts, which are probably worse overall that the few minor floods and forest fires.

When I was little we had a bad storm that knocked down turns of trees and took out the power for like a week.

More recently, various wildfires in California. We fortunately didn’t need to evacuate, but we were ready and could see the flames cresting the hills of the state park from our house.

Perth hailstorm of 2011. Every car was pockmarked for about a decade after, and some lawn chairs fell over. In the grand scheme of things, not that big

Both major freezes in the last 5 years in Texas.