> Okay, so the UK and Europe were hit by the biggest storm in ten years yesterday. I was out and about in one of the moments when it wasn't blowing, and I've been thinking: you guys have got to have been in some really nasty weather, right?
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> What is the worst weather everyone's actually been out and about in? This includes anything in the open air, or in transit to somewhere else inside a car, train etc. Being inside also counts if the building you were in was damaged by the weather.

I have probably been in objectively worse weather, in terms of wind speed or whatever, but the worst weather I have experienced in terms of it all hitting me personally, was on a job one night in the Coastguard boat. I was one of four people in the boat, which is a thirty-foot open rigid inflatable rescue boat. It has a windshield and hardtop over the area where you stand, but is effectively an open boat in bad conditions. On this occasion, it was night, it was absolutely howling with wind and rain, and the waves were around three to four metres. Compared to the size of the boat, this meant that when you were in the trough of a wave, you couldn't see anything above the next wave.

The most amazing thing was the moment we first turned out of the shelter of an island into the full force of the weather. We were doing about 30 knots out of the bay, and the instant we turned the corner, whammo, down to three knots.

Like I said, this wasn't any major weather by objective standards, but context is everything. Normal roughish weather conditions, in this boat, mean that you keep one hand on the rail or the console to steady yourself (you are standing up). In this case, we were out there for about three hours, and I spent every second of that time with both arms hugged around the cabintop support pillar, hanging on with all my strength. I had bruises all over my arms and chest the next day. Every couple of seconds we would get bounced so hard both my feet would leave the deck completely and I'd have to grip tighter to stop myself from being flung to the deck or out of the boat. In addition to this, every couple of seconds we would get completely drenched by a wave. We were wearing very good quality wet weather gear, but it just had no effect at all against this sort of thing.

We were all heading rapidly towards hypothermia by the time we got stood down from the job. I had been standing in ankle-to-knee-deep cold water for so long I couldn't feel my feet at all; when we got back in, the offduty crew gave us their dry clothes until we could get organised with our own. My definition of Extreme Weather, therefore, is when you're actually *happy* to put on Moose's stinky rugby socks that he's been wearing all day.