March 1993: The Storm of the Century. It caused snow to fall in every part of Georgia. From the mountains down to the Florida line.

In the north Georgia mountains it caused a thunder blizzard. High winds, lightning, and 3+ feet of snow in a matter of hours. This is in a part of the country that rarely gets a dusting of snow. 10s of thousands of trees down. The sound of pine trees snapping in the middle of the night sounded like cannon’s being fired. Power was out for more than a week in many places in the mountains. It took four days for me to get a clear path cut from my home to the main road.

The first shower I had in more than a week was when I made it down to Atlanta for the Grateful Dead shows.

Worst: Driving through a large Midwest city in the US on the freeway. Started raining. NBD. Then it got a lot harder. The wind really picked up fast. I’ve been around gust fronts and the like for thunderstorms before, this was unlike anything I’ve been through before. It got wild, fast. Tree parts and other debris started blowing past, it looked like what you’d think a tornado would, but it was far too widespread. Then the crazy thing…along with the wind, rain, and debris, the visibility dropped to near zero with a fog or mist in the span of a minute. We had to pull over and stop with everyone else, nobody could see for a few minutes. I have never seen that happen before, the rapid and violent change to weather and visibility over such a large area.

Coolest: Driving over the western High Desert in the US. Got caught up in a snowstorm with lots of wind. Found a safe place to spend the night after some white-knuckle driving for an hour or two. Plenty of vehicles pushed by wind or slid off the road, we were some of the only stupid ones left driving. No place to park safely, not enough gas for the rest of the night to keep warm. Don’t want to be the dead ones found with CO poisoning by the highway patrol the next day. Anyway, woke up the next day and it was crystal clear, literally. The air was full of fine ice crystals blowing in the wind. The bright sun had a huge halo and cross like a “+” along with some other tangential arcs that felt both close and far away to us at ground level. I’m sure folks in colder climes see these, but it was a new one to me. Pretty wild to see.

Not the worst, but the weirdest happened while I was fishing in Minnesota. We were in a boat on an empty lake. It was a bright clear day without a could in the sky. While we fished we watched a single small black cloud blow over the lake. As we watched, this little lone angry cloud homed in right for our boat. Just before it passed over us, it started dumping rain. It wasn’t more than 100ft wide, but it passed right over us. After that the cloud dissipated and blew away. The weather was totally clear the rest of the day. It was the most personalized storm ever.

To answer the title question… many years ago I experienced a polar vortex that caused about a 100 degree temperature drop in less than 24 hours, that was pretty fun.

To address the body of OP, I would start taking important things out of the house and storing them somewhere safe… but I would think more storms = more damage = more likely the insurance cant deny you.

-40F to +40F in about a four hour period.

Maybe hail. At least one of the times I saw hail. It was a clear and sunny day without a cloud in the sky

Or a wall of rain. Once when I was a kid it was a race to get home: a wall of rain was coming through and I tried to make it back in time to stay dry

Closest I’ve had is weather that starts on one block but suddenly is completely different on another. What I mean is you’ll get rain on one block and then it almost magically won’t continue next block over despite basically having those same exact rain clouds.

Perfect example: a couple blocks away from me a few days ago it started suddenly pouring rain like Noah was building his ark. Went a couple blocks away and there isn’t a single drop to be found anywhere.

Although, there is another weird thing I am not 100% sure I hallucinated weather wise. My neck of the woods doesn’t get any sort of tornadoes, twisters, whatever. But one day in 8th grade, during some cheesy “you’re moving onto high school” type celebration, we were all out in a large field where all the festivities were set up. I swear some tiny, insignificant tornado or something spawned because I swear I remember blades of grass and some inflatable ball being picked up and moved around. Again, I’m not sure if that was a hallucination

blizzard of 78.

so much snow entire families were begging to get out of their homes for it.

2 cyclones and a

firestorm (pyro cumulonimbus) that destroyed our village and a zillion acres in Australia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cumulonimbus_flammagenitus

I’d take the cyclone

also 3 minor earthquakes (northern Thailand, New Zealand and The Philippines, in a what the fucking, fuck was that as the building shakes and near one volcano (Taal), I was in Tagaytay

I’m jinxed :)

Well I’ve got three answers to that.

The most severe weather I sheltered in place from was hurricane Fran. Fortunately it didn’t rearrange my family’s own chunk of the forest too bad but some trees were thrown on a few houses.

The most severe weather I’ve experienced unsheltered was Hurricane Noel. The dumbfuck 20 year old I used to be decided to ride a motorcycle from Daytona to West Palm Beach for no particular reason. I got my giblets rinsed. That wasn’t the most unpleasant weather I’ve ever been in though, I rode that same motorcycle through a freezing rain storm about 3 years later. I kept having to pound my fist into my visor to de-ice it.

The worst aftermath of weather I’ve seen but wasn’t personally in was an EF-3 tornado. It was on the ground for over an hour, it cut a path a thousand feet wide and easily 50 miles long, tearing through forest, neighborhoods and commercial districts. I worked as a flight instructor at a nearby airport, so afterward I got a fairly good look at the damage path from the air. It looked kind of like a logging operation, you know how they’ll take a parcel of land and clear cut it either for development or for the timber? Except smeared across the landscape crossing roads and taking houses and buildings with the trees.

When it’s raining but just in, like, one spot where you can go into it and then go out of it again is just about the craziest weather I’ve experienced.

Unless earthquakes count as “weather.” I was in “the big one” of '89 in California. I was only 4, but I remember it knocking me down when I was walking across the street and then sprinting home because of it.

In 2022 we had “calima” in southern Spain. It happens when wind blows in sand from Sahara and is quite common but this one was insane. I only have one shitty picture of it:

There’s no filter here and it’s in the middle of the day. This is what everything looked like. This is what it normally looks like:

It was as if the whole world got an instant sepia filter. When you were walking outside you could fell the sand in your eyes. Everything got covered in a thin layer of red sand. They had to pressure wash the whole region:

I don’t remember really, but I jumped into a wave during a storm as a kid. It plowed my face along the sand, scraping it.

I’ve been in 3 tornadoes… don’t wish to be in any more. If you see a green sky, get into a basement if you can and an interior room if you can’t.

Hurricane with 2 week blackout following it.

Tornado but it was a block away - the sky was GREEN. I looked out the window and thought “that’s odd” then my brother called and said there is a tornado by you go take the kids to an interior room (hallway was best we could do). It knocked down a checkers and a car dealership, tossed cars around.