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
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.
Blizzards / nor’easters and ice storms happen in NY, in addition to some gnarly microburst storms. My worst was when a microburst hit CNY and delayed my start to high school as there was no power and trees were down everywhere for a couple days.
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 Kaikoura Earthquake in November 2016. Imagine lying between the rails of a railway track and having a freight train pass over you - our whole HOUSE was shaking like that.
And we were HUNDREDS of kilometers away from the epicenter.
The Baltic sea just had a once-in-a-century storm surge this fall. There was little danger since the baltic sea is rather well protected, but many local dikes weren’t up for the job, resulting in quite some damage (in general, the houses on my island were mostly unscathered).
Took us the better of two months to drain the water from the island, and in the meantime we had to hike along the more robust dikes to get to the harbor.
We also had to empty our lakes of saltwater to attempt and save our fire-bellied toads, as the Copenhagen Zoo is trying to preserve the species on the island.
First of all, dyke is not a good word to call lesbians. And also it’s unfair to expect them to build things against super strong storms, construction is mostly a hobby for most of them. And third- oh you’re talking about dams.
Yeah, I’ve been bamboozled by this before. Found out that both “dike” and “dyke” mean “water barrier” but also can be slurs.
I guess it depends on context and audience, though, I hope the context is clear in this case. :P
Edit: Also, “dam” doesn’t fit since it’s an island and not a river or lake. The island does have dams, but those are not nearly as important as the dikes.
Dikes or pair of dikes also refers to diagonal cutters. (Look like pliers with blades instead of jaws at the end) They are used for cutting sheet metal, also, wire cutters are also called dikes. Can also be used as a verb: Dike off the corner of that piece of steel, or, dike out that part of the circuit.
My wife is bi and it always messes with her when I say it. Just a trade term.
2022 Australian floods. Woken up pre-dawn by a car alarm set off by rising flood waters. Thankfully I had the foresight to park up on the street, which was a higher level, because water was more than half way up the height of the wheels by then in my garage.
All the proper roads out of the area were flooded already before I left, but thankfully I could get out by driving through pedestrian areas of the university I live near.
That was a very anxiety-ridden day as I waited until I could go back to assess the damage. Luckily the water only reached about 3/4 the height of the garage, which is below the 1st floor apartments. My apartment is at the top of a very small (like 5 m vertical) hill, just enough that we got off safe when neighbours did far, far worse.
For any Americans, the 1st floor in Australia (and many other countries) is equivalent to the second floor in America (hence it being above the garage)
I hate that convention. No, I was using the first floor in the American way…sort of.
The apartment is on the side of the hill. The lowest level on which apartments are placed is at ground level at the front, but one storey up at the back.
Pretty common in hilly areas in my country and especially my state. For my house, you have to climb about fifteen stairs to go in the front door and the back door is ground level. It’s a small one storey house.