Any awful severe storms that happened during your childhood?

We shouldn't forget about that ice storm (in 2014 I believe) that literally brought down trees and left some people without power for about a week! That was unreal. Not even close to a "twister" type storm, but it was pretty intense nonetheless.

Eponine, who are you asking?

And Firebolt, I think I saw a reenactment of that tornado on Storm Stories on the Weather Channel. In late August 1990 we actually had a tornado at our annual New York State Fair, in Syracuse NY, about 90 minutes east of us. I live in Rochester. I saw news coverage of it on YouTube, but I think it's been removed. Not sure how big it was. I was 15 months old. Lol. The fair was also entering its last day during the 1998 Labor Day derecho, but it got cancelled. I think that's where the brunt of the damage was. 2 people died there. A tree fell on a trailer with a man sleeping inside and someone else got hit by something large. We also had a small tornado hit about an hour west of here in July 2009. All we got were severe thunderstorms.

#pennygetyourownwifi

June 1995:
The sky was calm where I was at, but on the other side of my west Chicago suburban town, a tornado (which I didn't see) hit a car dealership, which is still in business today. I think it's a Nissan dealership. My grandmother who lived closer saw it and she said it looked like a spinning top.

Sunday May 18, 1997 7:28 PM west suburban Chicago, IL:
I was 14 then, I just inside from playing a game of ball. While The Simpsons were playing on FOX 32 Chicago, the sky got REAL black and threatening. Tornado warnings were posted for the west suburbs. It got real windy, lightening was flashing light cameras and thunder was crashing viciously. The TV cable went out, the local weather sirens blared, and my two cats went nuts, and then the only time in my life I and my dad took cover in the lower bathroom. It was scary, it was like all hell broke loose. I was so scared, I was reduced to tears and hugging my dad tight. After a half hour, when the storm settled down, the sky was still black like hell, but my dad and I walked in the front yard, with the sunset to the West, we saw a 2-mile streak of lightening race across the sky. It was so neat. The next morning, trees were snapped in half, my middle school was littered with dead leaves, and had a leaky gym roof, and the AC was dead. It was a hot and humid spring that year, and we had to do without AC for 3 weeks until school let out. It was the first time I saw storm damage without a news report.

July 17, 1997:
Another major storm hit. I don't remember too much about the storm, except that it was major, but I do remember seeing along the road on the way to a baseball game west of Chicago fences and trees littering the street.

April 2004 Utica, IL (Starved Rock State Park):
This I saw on the news as it was happening. A strong F3 tornado hits about 125 southwest of Chicago in a sub rural town of Utica which has a nice state park nearby. The tornado went right through the heart of the town destroying a club house and badly damaging a house nearby. A few months later, a friend and I went down there to hike at the nearby park and went through the town to see what damage was done. The clubhouse was just a vacant foundation (it's a memorial now with a stone waterfall), and a house nearby had its porch toppled over, but the town didn't look as bad as the news made it out to be. 8 people died in the clubhouse. In a strange way, that tornado did the town and state park a major favor, because of the tornado, they built a real fancy lodging resort nearby called the Grand Bear Lodge. I been there, and it was little bit like the Wisconsin Dells. They say it was the strongest tornado to hit the US that year.

My dad would always, when I got scared of the storms, would wake up and sit with me and watch the storms to calm me down.

I've always wanted to see a tornado without a TV, just to have that experience. People who live through them say "no you don't" but I just want to see one. Luckily there's a junior college in DuPage County that has a storm chasing course.