"First" hurricane?

[zal0phus]

What was your "first" hurricane? That is, the first that you remember, whether that was through seeing it on the news or actually living through it.
For me it was Hurricane Wilma. I'm from Chicago so I never experienced it, but I saw its landfall on the news as a 5-year-old and I remember being afraid that Disney World would be destroyed.

[Hurricaneman]

Living in SE Massachusetts until 2011 it had to be Gloria as it was large and all of southern New England had hurricane conditions but it knocked down our fence around the yard

[Cleveland Kent Evans]

I think I vaguely remember seeing some TV news reports about Hurricane Carla of 1961, which happenned when I was 10.

The first one I have really strong memories of, though, is Camille of 1969. That was just after I turned 18 and was working in a factory as my summer job. I lived in Lynchburg, Virginia, which was just a bit south of Nelson County, Virginia, which was devastated by floods caused by Camille's remnants on August 19. Some of the older people in the factory I worked in were sure that Camille had been caused by the first moon landing, which had happened on July 20 of that year.

[CFLHurricane]

I remember doing a school report on the pandemonium around hurricane Floyd, although my first experienced hurricane was Matthew.

Glad we skipped the Dorian experience

[Category5Kaiju]

I was born and grew up as on the West Coast of the US, so hurricanes were the last thing in my mind then. I was 4 when Hurricane Katrina happened (made landfall exactly two days after my birthday too, as I have a late August birthday). I remember vaguely seeing the destruction from that storm on the news (yes, when I lived in Seattle back then Hurricane Katrina was everywhere on the news). I was a bit confused as to why the local news kept covering this storm when it was so far away from where I lived. Growing up, I soon learned why, and no surprise given how fatal and powerful that storm was, how the government response was botched, and how it scarred a major city.

While I have never actually experienced a hurricane full-on, when I lived in Phoenix during high school, the city got some extreme floods from the remnants of Hurricane Norbert from the EPAC back in 2014 (in Arizona, it's interestingly the EPAC storms that can actually affect us rather than the Atlantic). I went to college in Virginia (still going to college this day as an undergraduate junior), and I remember Dorian scrapping the state in 2019 and how my university canceled classes for a day out of precaution.

[AnnularCane]

I was actually thinking about starting a thread like this maybe a couple of years or so ago, but it slipped my mind.

First one I remember is Hurricane Bob 1979, at age seven (in NOLA). I didn't know the name then, to me it was just a hurricane. I actually remember sitting on the front porch with my mom during the storm, thoroughly fascinated by everything. I did the same thing a couple of months later during what I (much) later realized was the fringes of Frederic. By that point I thought that's what you normally did during hurricanes, sit on the porch and watch the storm. (Even years later I still tended to go outside during tropical storms or the fringes of hurricanes.)

Apparently seven-year-old me had a very distorted view of what hurricanes were actually like, because I remember that night or the next night after Frederic, I caught a glimpse of news about the storm on TV, which mentioned how people were killed during the storm, and I was more than a little astonished by such a thing. "Hurricanes can kill?"

[Teban54]

2017 was the year I first moved to the US, and during the first week that I moved in, "Hurricane Harvey" popped up on the news every time I open a new tab in my browser. 2 weeks later, it's Hurricane Irma.

That's what got me into hurricane tracking actually. I started rigorously watching the NHC advisories during Lee and Maria, and discovered this forum during the downtime between Maria and Nate.

My first experience with TS conditions was Florence 2018. At one point the NHC forecast track had it pass right over us after landfall as a Cat 4, and we freaked out. Eventually it made a U-turn that avoided us completely, and all we got were some rain and light winds. In fact, Michael as a newly transformed extratropical cyclone felt stronger!

I have now moved to a place where it makes more sense to track winter storms than hurricanes. Strange enough, I haven't gotten into winter weather watching yet.

Edit: Something funny to note, the day after the Eta recon (when we all thought it was a T8.0 when it was just a Cat 4), I was at a meeting where we needed to introduce ourselves, fun facts about ourselves, etc. I said I track hurricanes and tried to explain the Eta situation. Some people I know were joking that I wanted storms to be strong and kill people, lol.

[Hurricane2021]

The closest I came to a tropical cyclone was when I was about 11 years old, during Hurricane Catarina in 2004. Only light winds of 30 to 40 km/h were recorded, as we were at a considerable distance from the cyclone, but it was able to cause some damage to crops in the region

[Wampadawg]

I had recently moved to Houston to run a manufacturing plant.This storm was coming that everyone was talking about .I remember writing on the white board, RAIN event only and everyone relax…….then Harvey rolled in welcome to the Gulf Coast your dumb Canuck

[Nuno]

What was your "first" hurricane? That is, the first that you remember, whether that was through seeing it on the news or actually living through it.
For me it was Hurricane Wilma. I'm from Chicago so I never experienced it, but I saw its landfall on the news as a 5-year-old and I remember being afraid that Disney World would be destroyed.

I went through Andrew was a small child. In hindsight it was pretty traumatic and likely responsible for my interest in storms. First storm I remember tracking from formation to dissolution was Floyd.

[Cat5James]

Sandy was my first experience with a tropical system in Long Island, NY (not quite a hurricane).. Irma in 2017 in S FL. that was a very intense week on approach.

[cajungal]

Hurricane Juan I was 9 but don’t have much memory of it. Only thing I remember is severe flooding in Terrebonne parish. Hurricane Andrew as a 16 year old was the 1st hurricane I have very vivid memory of. Lived in Terrebonne parish just north of Houma. And remember the eye wall scraping our area and never forgot the sound of the wind sounding like a freight train. And it was night so couldn’t see anything. When the 1st feeder bands starting coming through it was early evening and could see the pine trees touching to the ground. And my bedroom curtains being sucked all the way in. Me and my brother slept in sleeping bags in the hall but really couldn’t sleep at all. Hurricane Ida though was much much longer in duration, felt it would never end. And way more extensive damage to the area.

[toad strangler]

Sandy was my first experience with a tropical system in Long Island, NY (not quite a hurricane).. Irma in 2017 in S FL. that was a very intense week on approach.

"Pre Storm Stress" (a real thing I can assure) many times is much worse than the actual event. Even when lucking out with Matthew, Irma (in my location), and Dorian the hangover from all that pent up stress is very real and fatiguing.

AS for me, my first active storm that I was cognizant of was Gloria. Living on the New Jersey shore it was a huge news event.

[cycloneye]

My first experience was on August 12, 1956 with Hurricane Betsy and that is one day old for me. In adult life was Hugo, 1989.

[Iceresistance]

Erin 2007 was almost like a hurricane over OKC, I don't remember it very well since it was over 10 years ago.

[nativefloridian]

Experienced many through the years living here in South Florida.....but Hurricane Cleo - 1964 was the first I actually remember. The only other one before Cleo was Donna in 1960, but I was only 3 at the time, so don't really remember that one.

[Nuno]

Sandy was my first experience with a tropical system in Long Island, NY (not quite a hurricane).. Irma in 2017 in S FL. that was a very intense week on approach.

For me I remember seeing the NWS alert crawl on the screen that "parts of SFL may be uninhabitable for months" and it was a moment of having to accept that life was about to get very difficult and that it was going to be like how it was after Andrew.. We were very fortunate, compared to how others fared during Irma.

[wxman22]

First Hurricane for me was Rita even though Houston didn't take a direct hit.But there were gust over 60mph if that counts LOL.First full fledged hurricane impact was Ike.