Riding in a Thunderstorm

[user 1215]

As I sit here at my computer trying to install my daughter's homeschool work, I am mesmerized by the lightning show going on outside. As I took a break and stood on the back porch (rain stopped; lightning still going on), the wail of the AutoTrain passing 1000-feet to my South got me thinking...

I took a trip to California about three years ago from Albuquerque. Unfortunately, in January/February, a good solid chunk of the trip is in the dark. I got to see quite a bit in NM & Arizona, but I missed all of the Mojave. How cool would it have been to see the landscape illuminated by intense flashes of light.

Has anyone experience an otherwise pitch dark night on the train where you could actually enjoy some of the landscape by lightning?

 

[ALC Rail Writer]

This June on the CZ a storm followed us from DEN to CHI. It was kind of nice because the water washed away the dirt on the windows. I didn't hear any thunder but saw the lightning.

 

[p&sr]

Has anyone experience an otherwise pitch dark night on the train where you could actually enjoy some of the landscape by lightning?

Yes, August of 2004, eastbound through Ohio on the Capitol Limited. Dramatic lightning all around us for quite a while. I was in the Sightseeing Lounge (watching the movie which they used to show there), with rain striking hard on the windows and lightning striking all around us at close range. Very impressive!

 

[Amtrak839]

July 2008 my mom and I were in a sleeper on 92. We ran under a thunderstorm for quite a ways along the Potomac near Quantico. Lots of lightning, thunder, wind, and rain. Could barely see out the window. Train charged right through the storm at track speed. Much fun. We were actually coming back from a funeral in Florida, and my dad had needed to stay a day longer than us to wrap things up, so we took the train and he flew. We ended up having a race to see who would get home first. He was flying into IAD, which got hammered by the storm, so his flight was held in Tampa for more than two hours while they waited for the weather to clear. We got home first because of the storm, which was very satisfying after having to listen to him gloat, "I'll give you a 700 mile head start and run you down" (he prefers flying to taking the train).

 

[JayPea]

I was on the SWC in 2006 when a storm hit in Missouri. This was in the fall and it was dark by then. There was some neat lightning in it. And a couple of weeks ago, we hit a pretty good thunderstorm in Montana, just as we were nearing Whitefish. There was some great lightning in it, and the thunder was loud enough you could hear it over the train's noise. There was also torrential rain and hail. It was still raining bucketsful at Whitefish, and only the most desparate of smokers ventured out for a smoke. The rain let up just before the stop ended and so the rest of us got a few minutes of fresh air.

 

[Upstate]

So would a tornado still sound like a train if you are already riding on a train?

 

[MattW]

It'd be interesting to "race" a tornado on a perfectly parallel course out where the tornado couldn't do any damage...

 

[Crescent ATN & TCL]

I would love to be in a Sightseer lounge during a lightning storm. I like to look out the window of my house when its thundering and lightning, it would be all the better to see it through the huge windows in the Sightseer Lounge.

 

[AlanB]

I've been on many trains, not just Amtrak, during a thunder and lightning storm both in daylight and darkness. It's always an interesting experience.

 

[Cascadia]

In the late seventies I took the train across South Dakota - Would that have been the North Coast Hiawatha? There was a thunderstorm on the horizon at dark, a big one and it was far away, there was tons of lightning and the cool thing was that the lightning lit up the inside of the clouds like they were paper lanterns. I always remembered that as one of my main memories of that trip, which was returning from Seattle to Minneapolis.

 

[Bob Dylan]

Have seen many thunderstorms all over the country from planes.cars,the ground etc. but nothing so far tops the massive T-storms Ive seen crossing the dessert and plains @ night while on a train!The thunder is sometimes so loud you think the engine blew up and the poring rain and wind block the view but then the lightning comes and its awesome

how powerful,wonderful and scarey it can be!

 

[amtrakwolverine]

in 2008 riding on the texas eagle the storm was so bad UP had us sit still on the tracks until it eased up for safety concerns.

 

[DesertRat]

Wow, that's an idea. I've gone across the Mojave via the freeways during storm season (usually Jul-Sep), and the light shows *are* just amazing. That's another excuse to plan a trip.

 

[jis]

I've been on many trains, not just Amtrak, during a thunder and lightning storm both in daylight and darkness. It's always an interesting experience.

I specially remember a ride on a Chicago, South Shore and South Bend train during an OTOL Fest - riding through a humongous thunderstorm under a tornado warning.

 

[cpamtfan]

I just got back from a week in sunny, hot New Hampshire with only one 30 second drizzel the whole week to crazy NY weather <_< . First, a large thunderstorm with sky to ground with lightnighning yards from us, insanely loud thunder to go with the lightning, and rain that was coming down as hard as it could possibly be. Then this morning at like two in the morning, another tremendous storm woke me out of my slumber. Sorry, though, I don't really have any "cool " train stories.

 

[TampAGS]

If there were ever storms visible from a train I was on, the interior lights prevented me from seeing them. I've seen some beautiful light shows from the air at a far enough distance where I knew the plane wasn't in harm's way. I know that planes are designed to "weather" the occasional lightning strike, but I'd still much prefer to be on a train vs. a plane when traveling up close to or in an electrical storm.

 

Lightning can be beautiful when seen from afar, but a safe distance is a luxury that isn't often available to me living in the supposed "Lightning Capital of the World" ("Tampa" originates from the native American language of the Calusa, and is believed to translate to "sticks of fire", meaning lightning). Close proximity portrays lightning in a totally different "light", especially when that proximity blows up half of your household appliances (even with surge protectors), and scares the livin' bejesus out of you in the process!

 

[Philzy]

Last year or the year before I took a trip from Orlando down to Tampa/St. Pete for Pride, the train on the way back got caught in a thunderstorm that followed us all the way to Orlando. It was great. It sounds odd, but it felt cozy to be on a train in the pouring down rain and a great sigh of relief to not being driving down the 4 white knuckled with a bunch of stupid drivers. I was amazed how quiet it was. I ended up heading up to the cafe car and grabbing a glass of wine and "watching the show" of lightning the entire trip there.

Upon arrival in Orlando the storm had gotten so bad we had dime size hail and since there was little if any roof coverage they wouldn't let us off the train until it let up. It made one heck of a racket let me tell you... Once we disembarked, they actually moved the train up about three car positions so people wouldn't have to walk as far in the rain, mind you there were more than over 100 people waiting to board the northbound train, so kind of understandable.

Rain on a train? Throughly enjoyable and highly recomended.

 

[espeefoamer]

I was riding the eastbound Texas Eagle through Arkansas one night watching a thunderstorm far off to the east. I watched the storm for many miles. The worst thunderstorm I saw while travelling,was on a Greyhound bus one night in Arizona,between San Diego and Tucson.

 

[Neil_M]

A few years ago in France I was travelling from Lyon via Clermont Ferrand on the 'Cevenol' from St Germain de Fosses to Arles.

South of CF the line is massively scenic, running through river gorges and extinct volcanos as a back drop. The day started sunny enough but as we got closer to Alès the sky was black and the rain fell in curtains, possibly the heaviest rain I have ever seen, all backed up by a wonderful display of thunder and lightning.

At one point we were in a shallow cutting and the water was cascading over the sides of the cutting like a dam bursting..... My travelling companion and myself exchanged glances and told each other this wasn't looking good.....

We made Nimes in one piece though, even though you could barely see 10 yards due to the rain!

We got to Arles about 20 late and across the Rhone you could see the huge thunderstorm sending zaps of lightning to the ground, very impressive.

Arles kept catching the edge of the storm and from our restaurant (great Monkfish!) we watched the streets flood with the heavy rain that fell every 20 minutes or so.

The next morning we wandered to the station only to find complete chaos.

The storm had washed signal cabins, track and parts of the infrastructure away and several sleeper trains were stranded along the Rhone Valley.

The line we had travelled on the previous evening had had a bridge washed away and the line was shut for the best part of the year till they rebuilt it.

A TV report showed the massive damage when we got to Nice that evening and the most telling tale was the story of a supermarket that was flooded out and most of the staff found refuge sat on the roof of a large road truck, the water was that deep....

Don't mess with Mother Nature!

 

[chertling]

On my trip this past Spring, we went through a thunderstorm on the CL on our way to WAS from CHI. It was raining as we left Chicago... and by the time we reached Elkhart, we were in the core of the storm... we sat in our room and in the SSL watching the storm until just past Toledo. The lighting was AMAZING, especially in the SSL. Many of the bolts of lightning were quite close... we had no trouble hearing the thunder inside the train.

 

[JayPea]

If there were ever storms visible from a train I was on, the interior lights prevented me from seeing them. I've seen some beautiful light shows from the air at a far enough distance where I knew the plane wasn't in harm's way. I know that planes are designed to "weather" the occasional lightning strike, but I'd still much prefer to be on a train vs. a plane when traveling up close to or in an electrical storm. 

Lightning can be beautiful when seen from afar, but a safe distance is a luxury that isn't often available to me living in the supposed "Lightning Capital of the World" ("Tampa" originates from the native American language of the Calusa, and is believed to translate to "sticks of fire", meaning lightning). Close proximity portrays lightning in a totally different "light", especially when that proximity blows up half of your household appliances (even with surge protectors), and scares the livin' bejesus out of you in the process!

A couple of days ago a storm hit in the Spokane area, and in a town north of Spokane, one man was laying awake, counting the seconds between the lightning and the thunder to see how close the lightning was hitting. He found out----when lightning hit his newly built house. That was a little bit closer than he would have liked, I'm sure! :blink:

 

[AlanB]

If there were ever storms visible from a train I was on, the interior lights prevented me from seeing them. I've seen some beautiful light shows from the air at a far enough distance where I knew the plane wasn't in harm's way. I know that planes are designed to "weather" the occasional lightning strike, but I'd still much prefer to be on a train vs. a plane when traveling up close to or in an electrical storm. 

Lightning can be beautiful when seen from afar, but a safe distance is a luxury that isn't often available to me living in the supposed "Lightning Capital of the World" ("Tampa" originates from the native American language of the Calusa, and is believed to translate to "sticks of fire", meaning lightning). Close proximity portrays lightning in a totally different "light", especially when that proximity blows up half of your household appliances (even with surge protectors), and scares the livin' bejesus out of you in the process!

A couple of days ago a storm hit in the Spokane area, and in a town north of Spokane, one man was laying awake, counting the seconds between the lightning and the thunder to see how close the lightning was hitting. He found out----when lightning hit his newly built house. That was a little bit closer than he would have liked, I'm sure! :blink:

I guess that made him bolt upright. :lol: :lol: :lol:

 

[TampAGS]

A couple of days ago a storm hit in the Spokane area, and in a town north of Spokane, one man was laying awake, counting the seconds between the lightning and the thunder to see how close the lightning was hitting. He found out----when lightning hit his newly built house. That was a little bit closer than he would have liked, I'm sure! :blink:

I guess that made him bolt upright. :lol: :lol: :lol:

Shocking tale... I'm sure he was dumbstruck.

 

[Ispolkom]

So would a tornado still sound like a train if you are already riding on a train?

I'm not sure. In this story the engineer didn't notice the tornado until it hit the Empire Builder. But I guess there is a lot of noise in steam locomotives.

Of course, now there's much better forecasting (though the small tornado that hit Minneapolis on Thursday came without any warning), but I'd imagine that the Superliners would be more vulnerable to side winds than single-level heavy-weight equipment was.

 

[DET63]

In the late seventies I took the train across South Dakota - Would that have been the North Coast Hiawatha? .

Unlikely. The Hiawatha ran across southern North Dakota.