Wild Weather Experiences

(Na’ima Martin)

Kit Acker in the Eye of the Hurricane

I was in a hurricane in Jamaica. We were in a hotel when it happened. They shut down doors, and we were just in our room for days. It actually ended two days after it started, or at least it moved areas so we were able to open up again. It was kind of scary, but not too bad, because I was in my hotel with my sister and her boyfriend. We played charades, and that's how we entertained ourselves.When the storm ended, trees were turned over. Buildings were kind of crushed. It was coming directly at the hotel. You would hear it banging on the door. We had to put our chairs and lock the door with them, and barricade it.
(Na’ima Martin)

Senior Cat Coryat Flying through the Storm

I was flying a plane when a thunderstorm appeared over the airport I needed to land at, and you cannot land into a thunderstorm. We're so high and in the middle of Mississippi, so it's a dead zone. You really can't see the radar that well, and you don't really know what the weather is. All of a sudden it was pink, which means a bad storm. We just sped up really fast. If I was alone, I would have diverted. I have a lot of respect for the weather, and my flight instructor clearly did not. There's airports littered everywhere [so] I would have quickly landed somewhere else. But the biggest problem was the thunderstorm had a gust front. If we landed, there was nobody at the airport to help us tie down the plane. The plane would have probably blown over and gotten damaged, so we couldn't divert. In aviation, you have to take safety over damage.
(Na’ima Martin)

Mr. Hal Roberts: When Lightning Strikes

When I was about 10 years old, I was at a sleepaway camp, and one of the activities we could choose was a day hike. I headed out with two counselors who seemed like adults at the time, but I’m sure now they were 20-year-old college kids. And we hiked out into the woods a couple hours.

It seemed like it was gonna rain. We turned back on the way back, it just started torrentially thunderstorming. We got to a creek crossing, and I remember a giant boom and crack. It just [sounded] like the Earth [was] exploding. I woke up along with everybody else who had been [on] the hike with me, and we were all scattered off the trail. We’d all been knocked out, but as far as I remember, nobody was seriously injured. We just walked back to the camp, and lived our life as normal. That was my story about how I got hit by lightning during summer camp. I didn’t get any superpowers. All I got is a funny memory of just waking up on the side of the path.
(Na’ima Martin)

Senior Iris Trentham: When Rivers Rise

I was up in East Tennessee, in the mountains, and we were going on a hike. We didn’t know it was gonna rain, but it flash flooded. I was with my family and all my cousins, but we were all separated, and then it just started pouring down rain, out of nowhere. Then the stream started filling up really fast. There’s no cell service, and we didn’t have our phones. Then the fire department rescued us with ropes. There was so much water you couldn’t go anywhere. [The firemen] just got us out of that.

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