Sad to hear you had to divert from the toilet!. . . .Turbulence comes in different 'quantities' so to speak. Occasional, light, moderate, severe and so on. I have encountered near to severe when i had to make a divert because of a critically ill passenger. The only direction i could head (apart from forward) was into a storm. The airplane was descended down to about FL120 initially, and we made a landing in strong winds (head wind fortunately) and made it to the gate in one piece.
Taking turbulence to extremes, there is something known as Clear Air Turbulence. . .CAT is the bumpiness experienced by aircraft at high altitudes, usually above 18,000 feet, in either cloud-free conditions or in stratiform clouds. It occurs when gravity waves (undulations if i remember correctly) in the upper atmosphere become steep and unstable, then break down into chaotic motion. These unstable waves occur when vertical wind shear becomes locally excessive, allowing the waves to overcome the stability of environmental temperature conditions. Most CAT occurs on the fringes of (not within the core of) the jet stream in the vicinity of upper level frontal zones where temperature contrasts are strong.
A way to see these area are viewing a "Deformation-Vertical Shear Index" or DVSI. forecast image.
Hope this helps . .
