What's it like to be in a hurricane? Anything like being in a quake?

Being in California, we never get hurricanes.

However, I have been in a few quake. The funny thing about quakes is, you don't really realize whats going on until afterwards.

Well imagine a HEAVY HEAVY rain with 74+MPH winds. For several hours.

And if you're lucky, it just stops and the sun comes out. Oh yeah, that's the eye of the storm and now you'll get another dose.

Picture having the wind and rain batter your home for hours. Plus, you know the thing is headed for you, so you have all the anxiety. But then, you have time to vacate, unlike a quake which are more unpredictable.

but, have been in a hurricane. Let me just tell you this: If you are ever in the path of one, and you are told to evacuate--do it.

Hurricanes last a long time. The noise is incredible, there is nothing like it. The force is, and I rarely use this word, awesome. A Hurricane is like the atmosphere has had a very very bad day and has unleashed its anger in much the same way a toddler (but a really really really big toddler) will. Afterwards, the tension has subsided and the skies are insanely beautiful. Like a Quake is release of tension.....

The Quake I was in was minor, so we just heard the roof jump a little off the walls.....Boom......

Well, maybe not. Hearing trees crash around you in the middle of the night wondering if they have hit your house and or car and not being able to do anything for about 6 hours (give or take) as water starts entering your house. That might be worse than the waiting.

It is very different. But having the earth move out from under you isn't any better - it's just a different kind of fear/helplessness.

down pour of rain. Roofs getting ripped off of buildings. Debris flying everywhere. It is rough! Never have been in an earthquake though!

Imagine sitting at home, minding your business...say watching the world series and the A's and Giants are playing in it per chance....

Then suddenly you're on the floor, the floor itself is shaking, everything around you is rumbling, the dog can't even stand up and you tell yourself

"I only had 1 half of a beer...and its all over me now...what the..."

Then suddenly it stops, you have no power and there's dust everywhere.

when I was living there in the 1970s. We were living in a high-rise building quite a ways inland, so we taped up our windows and waited.

Imagine rain raining sideways at ever increasing speeds, then a period of calm, then rain raining sideways again, then finding tree brances and debris all over the place the next morning. The whole process seemed to take hours.

I've lived on the West Coast and Japan and lived through several minor earthquakes. Scary, but it's over in a minute or two.

I've lived in the Midwest and was within visual distance of a tornado on that memorable night in the spring of 1965 when seven funnels touched down in the Twin Cities area and baseball-sized hail fell in our front yard.

The hurricane was the least frightening of the experiences, but I wasn't in a really big one.