Tornadoes in Texas by Niki2

REAL WORLD EVENT DISCUSSIONS

Tornadoes in Texas

POSTED BY: NIKI2
UPDATED: Friday, April 6, 2012 13:31
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Wednesday, April 4, 2012 9:36 AM

Gettin' old, but still a hippie at heart...

I watched some of the coverage of yesterday's horrifying tornadoes in Texas. I sat there agape at the devastation in the parking lot of that truck company, where 18-wheelers and others were tossed around like plastic models. Once again I'm mystified by people in Tornado Alley who say they'll take their tornadoes over our earthquakes any time. The only difference, as I see it, is that you hopefully have some warning when a tornado is headed your way, while earthquakes come essentially out of the blue.

But beyond that, except for cities whose buildings aren't structured to take earthquakes, 'quakes do FAR less damage than tornadoes and are over in a few minutes. Crouched into a hallway for ages waiting to see if a twister is gonna gitcha or not seems to me far worse. And the POWER of a tornado where it touches ground far exceeds anything a 'quake has to offer!

The first thirty seconds of this one tossing tractor-trailers through the air is what I watched with my jaw on the ground. Some newsperson said those things weight OVER 30,000 POUNDS, empty!

This one, two--at 15 seconds, look how it rolls those trucks around as if they were toys!

At 2:40 it shows the devastation of the tractor-trailer yard, which I watched over and over. I try, but I cannot conceive of a wind with the strength to do that, so easily!

The other thing that gets me is at 3:33...you can see how the tornado crumpled up that rig near the bottom of the screen...yet the entire ROW of cars no more than a car-length away from it appear untouched!

It's pretty impossible for a West Coaster to wrap my head around the force and specificity of these monsters! I'll take our shakers, thank you.

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Wednesday, April 4, 2012 3:13 PM

RIONAEIRE

Beir bua agus beannacht

Yeah, tornadoes are pretty amazing. Every few years we get a little one somewhere in OR and WA but they are usually teeny tiny and don't do much, more like dust devils. But last year we had a reasonably sized one tear up a few houses in Almsville, about an hour and a half south of me, my dad went down to see and he said it was creepy, the way the damage was, it hits one thing and then lifts up again and then hits something else, like aliens or something.

I agree about tornadoes vs. earthquakes, earthquakes happen less often and are shorter.

I assume you're my pal until you let me know otherwise. "A completely coherant River means writers don't deliver" KatTaya

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Wednesday, April 4, 2012 5:30 PM

KWICKO

"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." -- William Casey, Reagan's presidential campaign manager & CIA Director (from first staff meeting in 1981)

I lived in Taiwan and California, so I'm familiar with earthquakes and tremors - my wife thinks I'm nuts because I still put glasses in the cupboards so they don't touch, and when she asked why, I told her it was so they wouldn't rattle when we got a little tremor, because that's how we used to do it...

And I live in the land of tornadoes, where I've been for most of the past 40 years, off and on. The funny thing is, I've been through far more earthquakes than I have tornadoes. Hell, I've only ever seen one funnel cloud, and it didn't even make it to the ground!

The tornadoes-vs-earthquakes thing is a game of chance and numbers. Earthquakes tend to hit larger areas and do more damage all at once, while tornadoes do damage to a much smaller area, but tend to do more extensive damage in that small area. And with a place as large as Texas, you kind of figure your chances aren't all that great of ever being in the same place as a tornado.

Plus, as mentioned, we tend to get some warning beforehand. When conditions are favorable ("tornado weather", they call it, and I understand Niki gets extremely annoyed if anyone talks about "earthquake weather"!

), you know it, and you keep an eye and ear on conditions.

Note to self: Mr. Raptor believes that women who want to control their reproductive processes are sluts.

Reference thread: http://beta.fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?bid=18&tid=51196

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Wednesday, April 4, 2012 5:36 PM

KWICKO

Quote:
The other thing that gets me is at 3:33...you can see how the tornado crumpled up that rig near the bottom of the screen...yet the entire ROW of cars no more than a car-length away from it appear untouched!

Couple weeks ago there was a pic from tornado damage up in Michigan, I think it was. House destroyed, just gone, yet here was a coat on a hanger, still hanging in what was left of the upstairs closet of a destroyed home. Weird that a wind could demolish the entire house, yet leave the coat on the hanger still hanging on a rod in the closet, undisturbed.

Here's the pic:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/statefarm/6990012565/sizes/z/in/photostre
am/

Note to self: Mr. Raptor believes that women who want to control their reproductive processes are sluts.

Reference thread: http://beta.fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?bid=18&tid=51196

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Wednesday, April 4, 2012 5:59 PM

1KIKI

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.

I sort of like tornadoes ... and earthquakes. Though I think my liking for them will stop when I hit a big enough one to be truly afraid.

I've been kind of keeping an eye out for EF-scale tornado ratings but haven't been seeing them in the news the last year or so. It's like having an earthquake and never finding out the Richter rating.

My understanding is that they have to actually look at the damage to get an idea of the force. As I recall the EF3 tornado will take small parts of a house off, the EF4 will move the house a bit and the EF5 will move the house off the foundation and deposit it elsewhere - in little matchsticks and rubble.

So anyway, I think rating tornadoes is a specialized skill, and I wonder why I haven't been seeing them lately. Has anyone else seen them?

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Wednesday, April 4, 2012 6:43 PM

RIONAEIRE

Beir bua agus beannacht

As a person who grew up with Twister, great movie, my favorite at age 10-11 and I still like it, I like to know the Fugita scale ratings too, now adays they use the Enhanced Fugita scale, so its EF this and EF that, why not just enhance the scale without changing the letters in front of it? That irritates me because I want it to be the way I'm used to it. Anyways I think F4s can destroy houses too, we had a high F2 in Almsville and it destroyed a couple of houses, so if the wind is just right and the conditions are just so smaller ones can really do damage too, but absolutely if you have an F5 things are going to be pulverized. And that thing they do with the pipes in the barn at the end wouldn't really work.

I assume you're my pal until you let me know otherwise. "A completely coherant River means writers don't deliver" KatTaya

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Wednesday, April 4, 2012 11:53 PM

AURAPTOR

America loves a winner!

We're constantly reminded of nature's fury. Be it Tsunami, tornado, flood... I just hope I don't see the day when a significant meteor impact takes place on the planet.

That'll be a very bad day indeed.

* Note to everyone* - Do not believe Anthony. He does not know what he thinks he knows on matters concerning of what I think or believe.

" AU, that was great, LOL!! " - Chrisisall

"The world is a dangerous place. Not because of the people who are evil; but because of the people who don't do anything about it." - Albert Einstein

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Thursday, April 5, 2012 6:07 AM

NIKI2

Gettin' old, but still a hippie at heart...

This one was reported as an EF3, from what I heard. And as to 'quakes, they only do massive damage when they hit a place unfitted for 'quakes. Even the Loma Prieta, which everyone looks back on as "our" last "big one", did hardly any real damage to the City, except in the Marina, which is built on fill so they shouldn't have expected otherwise.

While it got news coverage all over the place at the time, we Californian's kind of giggled when people from elsewhere called us, worried about our safety. A badly-built freeway collapsed in Oakland (made GREAT visuals), a section of the Bay Bridge fell down (they've refitted it and are adding a second, supposedly 'quake-proof, section because of high traffic volume), and the Marina got hit. A few other brick buildings suffered damage, but aside from some individual homes up in the Santa Cruz Mountains, and the Giants' stadium getting cracked a bit, that's IT! The rest of the entire Bay Area was essentially untouched, and this is a VERY high-density area. So when I look at what these twisters did, which I also realize made good footage so that's why they were highlighted, perhaps you can understand my shock. That's ONE set of tornados (sorry previously I didn't know the plural didn't have an "e"), at the BEGINNING of "tornado season"!

If/when we ever get hit with the actual "Big One" they keep talking about, we'll see. But it's only places like Mexico which aren't built to withstand them which suffer enormous damage, while twisters can leave a swath of destruction which is horrible to see.

And yes, there IS no "earthquake weather", that's an urban legend; we can get hit any time, and don't have warning. The fact that nobody died in this last spate of twisters is wonderful and amazing; I guess you can equate you guys getting warning to us being built to withstand our shakers, in a way. I'm glad both are the cases!

One thing that's always puzzled me, and I heard it again this time. They said people in that area don't have basements..can someone tell me why? It would seem the most logical thing in the world, so the only thing I can imagine is everyone thinks "it can't happen here"...? Jim said it's because they also get flooding, which might be it, but it doesn't seem logical to me, given crouching in a bathtub or the center of a house is pretty useless if a bit twister hits.

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Thursday, April 5, 2012 6:26 AM

KWICKO

Big part of why most houses in this area don't have basements has to do with the soil composition, to the best of my knowledge. In West Texas, where I spent much of my youth, the topsoil is really only 8" deep or so, and then it's underlaid by a thick layer of caliche, which is similar to concrete. Most people just don't want the expense of digging through all that. Houses used to have storm shelters in the back yards - small underground "rooms" big enough to hold 6-8 people for the duration of a tornado, but those have fallen out of favor as well, likely due to expense.

Also, homes in this part of the country tend to be built with at least one interior room that has no walls on the outside of the house, such as a bathroom with a sturdy tub enclosure.

I suppose I'm lucky; tornadoes are remarkable rare in the Austin area. Seems like the hills tend to break up the airflow before it can really form the right rotation. The tornadoes we've had around here tend to be in the flatter areas to the north and south of the city. We had a funnel sighted about a decade ago within two miles of my house, but we couldn't see it - too much rain was coming down. We knew conditions were ripe for twisters, and the light was a very odd shade of green. We all took refuge in the downstairs bathroom - wife, dogs, cats, and myself - and waited it out with a small radio. Lost the fence on one side of the house, and lost some shingles and had to re-roof the place, but other than that, we were fine.

Note to self: Mr. Raptor believes that women who want to control their reproductive processes are sluts.

Reference thread: http://beta.fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?bid=18&tid=51196

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Thursday, April 5, 2012 6:46 AM

NIKI2

Gettin' old, but still a hippie at heart...

Ah, now THAT makes logical sense. Yeah, I was going to mention the storm shelters, but wasn't sure whether stuff like "Twister" was using it for "artistic" purposes and they no longer existed.

What's a "sturdy tub enclosure"? Never heard of such a thing.

So it sounds like, in their way, homes are "built to withstand" just like our high rises are built to withstand a shaker. That makes sense. Here, there often ARE no places in the home which have no windows, at least none as small as would help in a twister. Thank you, I better understand.

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Friday, April 6, 2012 12:58 AM

PENGUIN

Apparently God doesn't like Texas...

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Friday, April 6, 2012 1:29 AM

KWICKO

Quote:
Originally posted by PENGUIN:
Apparently God doesn't like Texas...

Yup - a tornado is like a white trash divorce: when it's all said and done, someone's losing a trailer home!

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Friday, April 6, 2012 3:17 AM

FIVVER

It's amazing what they can do. Several years ago there was an outbreak in north Georgia and the next day I found a cancelled check in my back yard from a city over 60 miles away. I figure it was in a box in someone's attic.

Next time the folks in the DFW area should shelter at Cowboy Stadium. It's never had a recorded touchdown.

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Friday, April 6, 2012 5:49 AM

NIKI2

Gettin' old, but still a hippie at heart...

Quote:
It's never had a recorded touchdown

...YET! ;o)

I don't think people necessarily have time to get anywhere when a twister hits, do they?

Mike, when you pop in, could you answer my questions? Jim and I were talking about it last night and I told him I'd probably get answers to the questions I asked and let him know what they were.

1. What's a "sturdy tub enclosure"?

2. Are those central walls in any way reinforced?

Thanx.

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Friday, April 6, 2012 1:16 PM

KWICKO

Quote:
Originally posted by Niki2:
Quote:
It's never had a recorded touchdown
...YET! ;o)

Football joke. The Cowboys play there. And they suck.

Quote:

I don't think people necessarily have time to get anywhere when a twister hits, do they?

Not really.

Quote:

Mike, when you pop in, could you answer my questions? Jim and I were talking about it last night and I told him I'd probably get answers to the questions I asked and let him know what they were.

1. What's a "sturdy tub enclosure"?

Generally speaking, just a sturdy, old-style tub - porcelain or cast iron, heavy, solid, and deep enough to take cover in. Sometimes they have tiled walls on three sides, which (if done right) gives you a "double wall" around the tub, and every little bit helps.

The usual practice is to grab a blanket and/or couch cushions, dive in the tub, and cover yourself, and hope the tub doesn't get ripped out and thrown into the air. Things crashing down around you, you can live through. What you DON'T want is one of those thin plastic stand-up shower stalls with the glass door or glass walls, because they're too flimsy to offer protection, and the glass is going to become flying shards.

Quote:

2. Are those central walls in any way reinforced?

Some are, but not all, and I don't think there's really any building codes that require it. Mostly you want away from outer walls to get away from windows and to have less chance that the outer wall will be ripped away by the pressure differential. The basic idea is to put more walls and more material between you and whatever is going on outside, using the rest of your house as a buffer or "crumple zone".

There's also been a bit of a resurgence of "tornado rooms" since the big Jarrell tornado in 1997, which virtually wiped that town off the face of the earth. Tornado rooms are essentially strongboxes - hardened rooms with a single doorway, usually all metal or reinforced concrete, and they can be above-ground (in a garage, for instance), or below ground (built when the foundation is poured for the house. Seeing the damage that was done to Jarrell, above-ground tornado rooms would have been almost worthless, I think; the homes were wiped off their foundations, leaving nothing but the concrete pad. A hardened room below ground level was likely the only real safe place in that hell.

My old place was a two-story home with a bathroom upstairs and another downstairs. The downstairs bath was in the center of the home, with no outer walls, no windows, and the stairs went over the tub, which gave it lots of buffer zone and reinforcement (but not much headroom for me!). That was our go-to room when the sirens sounded.

My new place has no interior room without walls. That concerns me a bit, but tornadoes are so rare around this area that it doesn't give me too much pause.

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Friday, April 6, 2012 1:31 PM

KWICKO

Oh, and here's some footage of that '97 EF-5 monster and what it left of the town of Jarrell.

I've seen a funnel, and I hope I never see one of these.

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