What is your favorite weather day of all-time?

[Hoosier]

Only requirement is that it has to be something that you were alive for.

It doesn't necessarily have to be something that you personally witnessed (e.g. maybe you really enjoyed watching Hurricane Andrew make landfall) but where's the fun in that, right?  

Pick anything you want.  Winter storm, tornado, big hailstorm, derecho, ridiculous heat, insane dew point, etc.  Something that lasted a bit beyond 1 day is acceptable, but  "March 2012" is not.

[zinski1990]

Tough one. I'm 32 years old and have lived in Indianapolis for 18 years now. I'll list a few that are up there though. May 30, 2004 because it was the first big severe weather outbreak day I really remember and I had just moved to Indy from the UP of Michigan about a month earlier. December 22-23 2004 for obvious reasons lol. April 14, 2006 I experienced the most intense still in my life thunderstorm with baseball size hail and 90 mph winds. January 27-28 2009 winter storm we're Indy got 12.5 inches. My house i measured 14!. July 20, 2011 highest heat index I've been in 116 with 98 degrees and 79 dew point. January 5 2014 Polar Vortex Storm. Favorite outside my area probably 4/27/2011 5/22/2011 

[Malacka11]

Either February 1st, 2011 or October 11th, 2021. I think we all know what the first is... I was rather young but I remember the principal announcing that school would be cancelled for at minimum the next two days. I also recall there being an abandoned car on the road in my neighborhood when there was still only an inch or so on the ground. What really stands out to me was how quickly the snow accumulated in a matter of hours; I was playing with my Legos upstairs, listening to the wind, and in just a few hours everything was drifted to shit outside. The fort we built in the biggest  snowplow mound nearby was one for the ages too.

The second date marks my first successful tornado intercept. I had seen a few funnels before but I hadn't really documented them well. I was also all on my own this time; I just decided to wing it after work. The cell that produced my nader (for the record, definitely a very weak tornado) was just a tiny little "popcorn supercell" that formed ahead of the nearest, larger severe t-storm. It was truly a tiny cell, but it had an extremely definitely updraft with some textbook features that I found very educational for future chases. Easily the biggest problem I've encountered on my attempts is simply not knowing the difference between real phenomena and clouds that simply look like them. On a previous chase with some buddies I missed a funnel cloud visible from miles away because I thought it was just something else and that it couldn't possibly be a tornado, just to check radarscope and find that it was. 

 

[IWXwx]

Blizzard of '78...hands down

[bowtie`]

Any colorful sunset. 

[fluoronium]

10 hours ago, Malacka11 said:

Either February 1st, 2011 or October 11th, 2021. I think we all know what the first is... I was rather young but I remember the principal announcing that school would be cancelled for at minimum the next two days. I also recall there being an abandoned car on the road in my neighborhood when there was still only an inch or so on the ground. What really stands out to me was how quickly the snow accumulated in a matter of hours; I was playing with my Legos upstairs, listening to the wind, and in just a few hours everything was drifted to shit outside. The fort we built in the biggest  snowplow mound nearby was one for the ages too.

The second date marks my first successful tornado intercept. I had seen a few funnels before but I hadn't really documented them well. I was also all on my own this time; I just decided to wing it after work. The cell that produced my nader (for the record, definitely a very weak tornado) was just a tiny little "popcorn supercell" that formed ahead of the nearest, larger severe t-storm. It was truly a tiny cell, but it had an extremely definitely updraft with some textbook features that I found very educational for future chases. Easily the biggest problem I've encountered on my attempts is simply not knowing the difference between real phenomena and clouds that simply look like them. On a previous chase with some buddies I missed a funnel cloud visible from miles away because I thought it was just something else and that it couldn't possibly be a tornado, just to check radarscope and find that it was. 

 

I'm still salty about this day. (october 11 that is) I got trolled by some linear garbage with weak couplets to the southwest. I was out of range when that minisup fired and flew towards roanoke, even though it was closer to where I was living at the time than where I was chasing.

As for my favorite day, that's a hard choice. I saw 7 tornadoes on august 9, 2021 so that day is up there. GHD III was great though because I bought my dream property because of it. The snow kept others from visiting so I could put in an offer and buy it without going into a bidding war.

[OHweather]

Nov 10, 2002...Veteran's Day tornado outbreak. One of my first actual solid wx memories where I remember what I was doing that day, remember coverage of the event and some meteorological details, etc...an F2 tornado went through my town and missed my house by 100 yards. Probably the closest I'll ever be to a tornado (knock on wood) 

[michsnowfreak]

There's so many to choose from my honestly I have to go with:

January 6, 2014.

It's so hard to pick a favorite but I would say this is a very memorable one. It's easy to remember big snowstorms or favorite snowstorms, but the way this day transpired was so memorable.  Started with the big 11" snowstorm winding down and a 17" of drifty snowpack on the ground. Temperatures started near 30 as the storm ended and the snow had a heavy water content to it. Then I saw one of the craziest post storm temperature drops ever and the roads literally were frozen over in greased snow. There was no way road crews could remove it so it was like driving on ice rinks surrounded by massive snow banks. The temperature got down to -14 by the sunset, and it was an arctic sunset which had sereal colors in the sky. Winds were howling and snow drifting, wind chills were -55 and I remember the biting cold was something I'd never felt. The inside of people's windows were icing.  It's crazy to think now that at that time it was really only just the beginning of the historic Winter.

[cyclone77]

If I got to live one weather event over again I'd probably go with the December 14-15 1987 blizzard.  Remember the buildup to that storm was pretty hyped, even back then with no models to look at etc.  Remember watching Monday Night Football as the snow began and then ramped up.  After midnight is when it really ramped up with considerable thunder and lightning, and periods of 60+mph winds.  Had never seen anything even close to that as a 10yr old kid at the time.  

[hlcater]

8/10/20

[Hoosier]

As far as what I'd go with, it's a tough one.  Nothing clearly jumps out for me where I'm like 'yeah, that's definitely the one.'  Perhaps it would be 1/2/99.  There was just something a little extra special about that... following it in the days before and then watching it come to fruition.

[beavis1729]

54 minutes ago, Hoosier said:

As far as what I'd go with, it's a tough one.  Nothing clearly jumps out for me where I'm like 'yeah, that's definitely the one.'  Perhaps it would be 1/2/99.  There was just something a little extra special about that... following it in the days before and then watching it come to fruition.

Yeah, I’d put 1/2/99 at the top for those same reasons. #2 would be the super bowl storm in 2015…an incredibly wintry scene that kicked off the very cold month of Feb 2015. #3 would be 2/2/11 (GHD 1). #4 is 1/30/19, extreme cold and wind chills around -50.

[michsnowfreak]

19 minutes ago, beavis1729 said:

Yeah, I’d put 1/2/99 at the top for those same reasons. #2 would be the super bowl storm in 2015…an incredibly wintry scene that kicked off the very cold month of Feb 2015. #3 would be 2/2/11 (GHD 1). #4 is 1/30/19, extreme cold and wind chills around -50.

Oooh good choices. Esp 1/2/99 and 2/1/15

[IWXwx]

5 hours ago, OHweather said:

Nov 10, 2002...Veteran's Day tornado outbreak. One of my first actual solid wx memories where I remember what I was doing that day, remember coverage of the event and some meteorological details, etc...an F2 tornado went through my town and missed my house by 100 yards. Probably the closest I'll ever be to a tornado (knock on wood) 

I caught the very first tornado that day, an F-1 in Hartford City, IN. The same supercell that later dropped the Van Wert F-4.

I was too up close and personal with it as it passed a couple hundred yards in front of me before smacking the Marsh grocery store. That kept me from chasing it, because I had to stop to check on injuries at the store. Otherwise, I probably would have chased it into Ohio. It also put down 2 more short-lived tornadoes (Wells and Adams Co.) before dropping big one.

[nokywx]

Probably 3/9/98.  After what had been a subpar winter, this storm was a late bloomer, with no expectations at all until about 12 hours before the storm.  12-15 inches with 30-40 mph winds, followed by a couple of days of intermittent lake effect squalls.

Honorable mention would probably be severe weather on 3/2/12 & 5/30/04, and the heat and humidity of 7/14/95. 

[Hoosier]

11 minutes ago, nokywx said:

Probably 3/9/98.  After what had been a subpar winter, this storm was a late bloomer, with no expectations at all until about 12 hours before the storm.  12-15 inches with 30-40 mph winds, followed by a couple of days of intermittent lake effect squalls.

Honorable mention would probably be severe weather on 3/2/12 & 5/30/04, and the heat and humidity of 7/14/95. 

I've told the story before but I'll never forget looking at the radar before going to bed on the night of March 8, 1998 and thinking that something just didn't seem right with the forecasts of an inch or less (wasn't looking at models quite yet).  Sure enough, woke up to it absolutely dumping snow.  School was cancelled and I ended up with a foot.

[RogueWaves]

Obscure for most if not all on here, my date is 4/3/75. Not aware if there was even a headline for the 18" of concrete ending with bliz conditions that we had overnight from the 2nd to the 3rd. Could not see a single set of vehicle tracks in the streets. Completely snowed-in with nothing moving except my buddy and his dad walking past to his grandparent's place where their snowmobiles had already been put away for the year. I watched them for about 2 house lengths, and they disappeared into the whiteout conditions. I've yet to experience anything that shutdown travel so dramatically although 3/5/12 was similar but I was not in the hardest hit zone. Honorable mention goes to 1/3/99. I missed that storm as I was out of town but returned to a home buried in 18" OTG and a 40" drift on my deck.  

[TheRegionRat]

January 13-14 1979. The Blizzard of 79 in Chicagoland. I was only 10, so memories are a bit fuzzy, but a few details are unforgettable. The hardships the storm created. We didn't have school for several days. Shoveling mountains of snow. We had to shovel the alley from the garage to the street. 175 linear feet. In many spots the drifts we're taller than me. The city cleared large areas of the park and massive dump trucks created a moonscape of towering snow hills. In the valleys created you had no horizon. 

In contrast, the 1999 snowstorm was a breeze. One of my brothers and I shoveled the alley in a few hours. I did it myself after the groundhog day storm. No machines, just a me and a shovel. 

[chuckster2012]

January 25, 1978. The Ohio/ Indiana/ Michigan blizzard!

[frostfern]

https://www.spc.noaa.gov/misc/AbtDerechos/casepages/jul7-81991page.htm

I was 11 years old when I witnessed this storm.  In my parent's yard there were at least three 50' tall 2' thick oak trees that bent over so far they snapped off 20 feet off the ground.  There were trees down everywhere you looked.  Couldn't get out for 24 hours due to so many trees having to be cleared off the road, and the power wasn't restored until 5 days later.  It's funny with derocho there are always pockets that get hit way worse than areas around and we were right in a really bad pocket.  It looked as bad as some of the worst pictures from the 2020 Iowa derecho.  I really think it was around 90 mph.

It was actually kind of miserable, but of course I was excited.

[chuckster2012]

4 minutes ago, frostfern said:

https://www.spc.noaa.gov/misc/AbtDerechos/casepages/jul7-81991page.htm

I was 11 years old when I witnessed this storm.  In my parent's yard there were at least three 50' tall 2' thick oak trees that bent over so far they snapped off 20 feet off the ground.  There were trees down everywhere you looked.  Couldn't get out for 24 hours due to so many trees having to be cleared off the road, and the power wasn't restored until 5 days later.  It's funny with derocho there are always pockets that get hit way worse than areas around and we were right in a really bad pocket.  It looked as bad as some of the worst pictures from the 2020 Iowa derecho.  I really think it was around 90 mph.

It was actually kind of miserable, but of course I was excited.

That was your favorite day? Sounds terrible!

[frostfern]

1 minute ago, chuckster2012 said:

That was your favorite day? Sounds terrible!

It was terrible.  But it was exciting for me.

[hardypalmguy]

21 hours ago, cyclone77 said:

If I got to live one weather event over again I'd probably go with the December 14-15 1987 blizzard.  Remember the buildup to that storm was pretty hyped, even back then with no models to look at etc.  Remember watching Monday Night Football as the snow began and then ramped up.  After midnight is when it really ramped up with considerable thunder and lightning, and periods of 60+mph winds.  Had never seen anything even close to that as a 10yr old kid at the time.  

That one impacted SE WI too, didn't it?  I would have been 6 at the time and I think I remember it...

[King James]

GHD 1. Was living at the time about 11 miles due south of MDW and I feel like that was pretty much the epicenter of the beast. We had a roaring fire going before the storm started. Two cases of beer out on the back deck. And a couple of shovels 

 

As the storm started cranking up people came on down to hang by the fire and drink. We had legit thundersnow that got a reaction from everyone. 

 

I lived in a cul-de-sac and it was always plowed last so the whole block as just outside having a blast, marveling at the intensity of the storm.  Went to bed and woke up to find that it looked like I had never shoveled at all. Drifts up over car hoods and kids playing in the street 

Good times

 

 

 

 

[Chicago Storm]

For myself, if I had to pick a single day it would be 6/20/2021. Chasing a QLCS 10 minutes from home at 11PM and being hit by an EF-3 tornado easily takes the cake, and will be hard to top.

As for other events by weather type...

...Warm Season...
Damaging Winds: 8/23/2007 derecho. This derecho raked across portions of the Midwest on this day. Walking home while the derecho hit, with tree and other debris flying around, was an experience for sure. Power was out for four to five days, with significant and widespread tree/property damage in the area.
Hail: 6/26/2019. An isolated severe t'storm briefly perked up as it crossed the lake breeze, producing 2.25" hail and 50-60mph winds while home. This marked the biggest hail I have witnessed, while home or out chasing.
Tornado: 6/20/2021. Chasing a QLCS about 10 minutes from home at 11PM and being hit by an EF-3 tornado is as good as it gets. Then, being in the damage path all night long, and out drone surveying damage the next day. An honorable mention goes to 10/4/2013, which was the day of the Wayne, NE EF-4 tornado. We ended up being hit by the outer edge of the ciculation, having windows blown out on our vehicle, while I was hanging out the window trying to hold my GoPro to the hood.
Heat: 7/4-7/2012 heat wave. The hottest temperatures and longest duration of extreme heat I've experienced, with several days in a row of 100+ high temps. Being that the 4th of July is my favorite holiday, the overlap was perfect.

...Cold Season...
Snow: GHD 1. It hit the marks for most snowfall in a single storm and 24hr period I've experienced, some of the top snowfall rates I've witnessed, and the most TSSN I've experienced in one storm. The wind, snow and accumulation combo easily puts it at the top of the list.
Ice: I have yet to experience a significant ice storm, unfortunately.
Cold: 1/30-31/2019. Although brief, this event featured the coldest temperatures and wind chills I can recall experiencing. Honorable mention would be 1/5-7/2019. The duration was much more significant versus severity, when compared to the 2019 event.

[Baum]

22 hours ago, TheRegionRat said:

January 13-14 1979. The Blizzard of 79 in Chicagoland. I was only 10, so memories are a bit fuzzy, but a few details are unforgettable. The hardships the storm created. We didn't have school for several days. Shoveling mountains of snow. We had to shovel the alley from the garage to the street. 175 linear feet. In many spots the drifts we're taller than me. The city cleared large areas of the park and massive dump trucks created a moonscape of towering snow hills. In the valleys created you had no horizon. 

In contrast, the 1999 snowstorm was a breeze. One of my brothers and I shoveled the alley in a few hours. I did it myself after the groundhog day storm. No machines, just a me and a shovel. 

The late great John Coleman only guy to forecast it. Watched every station that night and all had 2-4" incl NWS Crazy Coleman called for a blizzard and the rest is history.

[cyclone77]

9 hours ago, hardypalmguy said:

That one impacted SE WI too, didn't it?  I would have been 6 at the time and I think I remember it...

Yeah it did.  I believe there were some 70mph reports up in southern WI.  The storm bombed out and went sub 980 near Chicago IIRC.

[pondo1000]

Blizzard of ‘96 in Philly

[OHweather]

On 11/13/2022 at 4:32 PM, IWXwx said:

I caught the very first tornado that day, an F-1 in Hartford City, IN. The same supercell that later dropped the Van Wert F-4.

I was too up close and personal with it as it passed a couple hundred yards in front of me before smacking the Marsh grocery store. That kept me from chasing it, because I had to stop to check on injuries at the store. Otherwise, I probably would have chased it into Ohio. It also put down 2 more short-lived tornadoes (Wells and Adams Co.) before dropping big one.

Pretty crazy that a cyclic supercell dropped that many tornadoes in northeast IN/northwest OH in mid November! And obviously, the F3 and F4 were quite substantial. 

A couple of other rather intense tornadoes occurred that day...one in particular hit Tiffin in north-central OH. It's possible it was stronger than a 3 based on how many houses it swept clean:

https://www.weather.gov/cle/event_20021002_tornado_outbreak_tiffin

 

[WestMichigan]

I am a little surprised Buckeye hasn't chimed in with March 8, 2008.