Worst storm you can remember

I'm from rural west of Ireland and we had some pretty bad storms. It wasn't unusual for us to lose electricity around Christmas time. In the 80's, because our pipes were above ground, plastic and not very thick, we used to lose water when the cold weather hit and the pipes would burst because of the water freezing. I have vague memories of my mother filling the bath with snow to use to flush the toilet. Times change and thankfully the council put in a decent underground system so we had a water supply all year round.

The last big storm I remember was one year just after Christmas day. You couldn't go outside or you'd get blown away. We only had single glazed windows and the wind was rattling them like no tomorrow. Suddenly the window on the landing blew in with the force of the wind. It was nearly 4pm and pretty much dark and my brothers had to go to my uncles house to borrow wood etc to board up the window. They had to climb onto the garage roof to board it up and it was pretty risky considering the weather at the time.

Other times the electricity would cut out during a storm and my mother would make us unplug everything, especially the phone. We were always warned not to answer the phone during a storm as you might get struck by lightening. My mother was always against candles and instead she had those old oil lamps. It's been years since I've seen them (and I wouldn't be surprised it they are banned for health and safety reasons) but I do miss them.

Since I've grown up and moved away the storms don't seem so bad. Maybe that's down to better buildings/infrastructure/being an adult but storms don't scare me as much. With Ophelia hitting us tonight it got me thinking about old times. There are people on boards a lot older than me, who grew up with worse conditions and hardly any technology. On the radio today they were telling people to charge their phones in case they lost electricity and it made me :pac:

Anyways, what storms have you survived?