Not anywhere near as severe as most of the stories above, but the summer after I graudated from college, I was rigging a show at a… major southern Virginia theme park. Summer thunderstorms were typical—you could smell them coming as the wind shifted and we got the smell of the brewery next door.
The park has “weather codes”:
clear = no threat
green = rain, but no lightning
yellow = lighting (rain or no—important for roller coasters)
red = thunderstorm
With various things you need to do at those times. We only had shows in the evening, but the theatre was outside, and not raked well, so water tended to come backstage. Me and two other guys stood guard with squeegees and kept the water flowing off the front of the stage. Eventually discovered that the fabric on the face was blocking the drain, so I jumped down into knee-deep water and cut away the fabric so it’ll drain.
About 5 minutes into this storm, one of the guys comes running out of the backstage and tells us we’re now in a “code purple”. We’re busy keeping backstage dry, but later find out that due to downed trees in the park, massive power outages, and hundreds of lightning strikes within the park, we’re basically on lockdown. No one (employees, or guests) are permitted out of the interior structures you’re sheltered in at code red until they determine that it’s clear. People were stuck inside for about an hour until they decided it was okay to let people leave the park.
Turned into a beautiful evening, and we had a great show with the 4k people still left in the park at showtime =)