Tornadoes

[Hoopz]

Anybody affected by the recent storms?  I know in Southern Indiana we have a few members (Hunk_4th, tta583, etc) and I think JackTucky is somewhere around there too but I don't recall exactly.  I may have him confused with someone else...  Checking to see if everyone is ok.

Pretty tragic situation.

[Le Chuck]

My family was living in Joplin during the 2011 F5 that wiped out half the town, they came out alright but Joplin hasn't recovered yet.  They ended up moving to Branson and just got hit last week.  Again no injuries but they are getting pretty sick of living in the path of destruction. 

[TopJimmyCooks]

Out here on the right coast it's hurricanes, but I really feel for the tornado victims.  They're so concentrated and violent compared to many storm types.  Glad to hear everyone's OK so far in the BYOAC community. 

My little bright side - due to our weak hurricane last year- Irene - I got my 20 year old, worn out roof reshingled mostly under an insurance claim.  Probably the first time I feel like Insurance has helped me beyond the bare minimum they had to do by law.  They waived depreciation, bless their pointy little heads.  Makes me feel a little better about paying an extra $120/month versus inland homeowners for government mandated wind and hail coverage. 

Nothing helps when people are hurt or killed, but hopefully America comes together to give Joplin/Branson/others a boost to get back going.

[Howard_Casto]

We had some warnings in our area, but for us even that's rare.  Tornadoes just don't make it to WV.... we are too far inland and our mountains tend to break anything up.  I think KY got hit pretty bad though.

[Louis Tully]

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[shmokes]

Hurricanes have way more potential to do damage. The biggest hurricanes are blowing sustained tornado speed winds but instead of cutting a relatively narrow swath of destruction the hurricane is typically 300 miles wide. But the tornado is kind of scarier. It just pops up out of nowhere. At least with a hurricane you've had your eye on it for a few days and the day before it hits ground you have a really good idea if it's gonna hit you. And, of course, only the biggest hurricanes come with wind speeds that get into tornado territory.

[Le Chuck]

Hurricanes have way more potential to do damage. The biggest hurricanes are blowing sustained tornado speed winds but instead of cutting a relatively narrow swath of destruction the hurricane is typically 300 miles wide. But the tornado is kind of scarier. It just pops up out of nowhere. At least with a hurricane you've had your eye on it for a few days and the day before it hits ground you have a really good idea if it's gonna hit you. And, of course, only the biggest hurricanes come with wind speeds that get into tornado territory.

I'll agree that one on one a tornado can't compare to a full force hurricane but when you take into account that there were 1,688 confirmed tornadoes last year alone, six of which went EF5, and the average citizen gets less than 5 minutes of warning before strike it's really a wash.  They are both terrible terrible things to live through.  Having weathered my fare share of EF4s back in MO and KS and been stationed in the path of Rita and Katrina I'll tell you neither is something I want to go through ever again. 

I roomed with a Meteorology major when I went to MU back in the '90s and he was a storm chaser.  Craziest group of folk I have ever met. 

[hypernova]

Hurricanes have way more potential to do damage. The biggest hurricanes are blowing sustained tornado speed winds but instead of cutting a relatively narrow swath of destruction the hurricane is typically 300 miles wide.

The biggest (category 5) hurricanes are only about equivalent to an F3 tornado.  (158-206 mph on Tornado's Fujita scale, and >= 156 mph on the hurricane's Saffir-Simpson scale).  But yes, the key word is the sustained winds.  Tornadoes are over and done with after only a few minutes, while some extremely strong hurricane winds can last hours upon hours.

Fortunately, as usual, our area of Ohio between Dayton and Cincinnati where I've always lived lucked out.  I've never had the (dis)pleasure of seeing a tornado up close.  Many areas around us in all three states got hit pretty hard.

[Howard_Casto]

I think my problem with predicatable natural disasters (not something unprecidented like this was) is that in many cases it is kind of the people's own fault. 

I know in WV we have a few areas in the state that regularly get flooding severe enough to destroy homes.  You'll see this people on the news and feel bad for them.. people will dontate tons of money for the uninsured and when they've got enough to rebuild what do they do?  The rebuild it in the exact same place that gets flooded every year!  Here's a pro tip.... if the area you live in regularly has floods, tornadoes, earthquakes or hurricanes as soon as you can scrape up enough money... MOVE!!!!  And yeah I'm not insensitive to the fact that some people can't afford to move but when you get that insurance check and/or enough dontations to completely rebuild your home, why not go the extra mile and rebuild it somewhere safer?

[hypernova]

We had some pretty bitchin' winds when the remnants of Ike came north through Ohio a few years back.  I think they did hit around the mid 70s in gusting.  It was pretty crazy.  Especially when houses weren't prepared for it, nor built for it.

You could tell the houses (and roofs) that were built well.  They still had all their siding and/or shingles intact.

[Le Chuck]

I've been caught in a few ---steaming pile of meadow muffin----assy sandstorms.  Those can suck all kinds of balls as well.  Don't go to Afghanistan kids, it's just no fun. 

[shmokes]

if the area you live in regularly has floods, tornadoes, earthquakes or hurricanes as soon as you can scrape up enough money... MOVE!!!!  And yeah I'm not insensitive to the fact that some people can't afford to move but when you get that insurance check and/or enough dontations to completely rebuild your home, why not go the extra mile and rebuild it somewhere safer?

I guess I'm not nearly as risk averse as you. I lived in Miami for 3.5 years and I loved it. And I've still never seen a hurricane. There are so many fantastic things about Miami that you experience just about every single day, or at least with great frequency. Why let the occasional bad thing outweigh every other consideration by default? The same goes for San Francisco. Are you enhancing your chances of being killed in a crazytown earthquake by living there? Sure. But what if you love living there. Are you better off living every day of your life in a place you don't love just so on that one day of the earthquake you can say, "Phew . . . Glad that's not me. I might have been one of the 300 people killed!" (out of a population of what . . . 10 million?)

Safety is just not the only consideration. Should a person build a home in a location that WILL flood at least once evry couple years? No, probably not. But worrying about the possibility of an earthquake, a tornado, a hurricane, a volcano? Meh . . . ya gotta strike a balance between living and staying alive.

[Howard_Casto]

There is a difference between being risk adverse and stupid.  I'm one of those rare people that isn't afraid of anything... literally.  I'm freakish that way.  I have no problems with people wanting to live in dangerous places, I just find it hard to give them my sympathy when they've been hit several times and still won't move. It's dumb to put your life in danger intentionally and it's dumb financially to build your home in a high risk area.  Here's the thing... if you live in a psuedo dangerous area and you've had no problems then stay.  As soon as you get wiped out though... it's time to frikkin move.  "Lightning strikes twice" is a horrible saying, because it strikes twice all the time!  Metaphorically speaking of course.

I don't get your logic either.  I'm sitting here trying to think of a single place in the world that is hurricane, earthquake, tornado or volcano prone (and I mean REALLY prone, not this you get a little bit of nothing once in a while or it might erupt 300 years from now) I'm coming up empty. 

The beach is a horrible place to live.  Sure it's nice to vacation there, but the salt and sand gets in everything, it's hot all the time, you have to deal with idiot tourists.  No thank you.  Then you've got LA, our resident earthquake hot-spot.  Bad traffic, even worse pollution AND you've got all the hassles of living near the ocean on top of that.  Again, no thank you.  The midwest is tornado alley... enough said on that one.    I can't really think of any nice places to live under a volcano.... Hawaii is nice, but most of the main islands are no longer active.  You've got Mt. Fuji, but it isn't really active either... heck it's a popular toursit activity to hike to the top. 

About the only nice place to live that fits your description is Japan.  I've got a fondness to Japan... but I've never visited, so I might hate it once I get there.  Like the other places on the list it looks really good on tv and in film... once you actually get there though... well let's just say I'll stick to my mountains even if they are being rapidly destroyed by mountain top removal.

Don't misunderstand, I really get the sentimental attachment to where you grow up, I'm still living in the same place after all of these years.  But when thinking of where I'd actually be willing to move, none of these danger zones come into mind... it's not even the risk, they just don't seem like nice places to live.

[shmokes]

I don't get your logic either.  I'm sitting here trying to think of a single place in the world that is hurricane, earthquake, tornado or volcano prone (and I mean REALLY prone, not this you get a little bit of nothing once in a while or it might erupt 300 years from now) I'm coming up empty. 

Shrug . . . ask your two-day-ago self what he was talking about.

Here's a pro tip.... if the area you live in regularly has floods, tornadoes, earthquakes or hurricanes as soon as you can scrape up enough money... MOVE!!!!

[shmokes]

The beach is a horrible place to live.  Sure it's nice to vacation there, but the salt and sand gets in everything, it's hot all the time, you have to deal with idiot tourists.  No thank you. 

After having spent 3.5 of the last 5 years in Miami, I think I'm qualified to say, "Nonsense." I mean . . . maybe if you literally lived on the beach. But typically you live by the beach and just visit it frequently. Sand does get everywhere when you visit. You shower most of it off when you're leaving the beach and then the rest when you take a real shower at home. The only place that gets any noticeable amount of unwanted sand is the car. Which you just vacuum every couple weeks. There are three months of the year in Miami where the weather is too hot. But even still we're talking low 90's. Where I worked in Southern Utah (St. George) has a few days per year that top 115 degrees, and pretty much the entire summer is over 100. Obviously there's the humid vs. dry heat issue, but that's chocolate and vanilla. I love the humidity. In any case, humid low 90's is unpleasantly warm, but not that bad. It doesn't touch 115. But that's just 3 months of the year. The rest of the year . . . like 8-9 months of the year is paradise. I'm talking 70-85 degrees 24-hours per day, 8-9 months of the year. You go out in shorts and flip-flops at 2 in the afternoon and you're perfectly comfortable. You go out in shorts and flip-flops at 2 in the morning and you're equally comfortable. And unless you're actually visiting the boardwalk or Lincoln Drive at South Beach or South Beach itself, you see no tourists ever. There are approximately 383473829 beaches in Florida, so South Beach isn't difficult to avoid.

The beach is a lovely place to live.

[TopJimmyCooks]

There's a million reasons why the TV news can always find some sad sack who's been flooded out 2 times in 5 years to interview.  Family owned land issues, complicated to sell land due to the river property line moving around due to floods, can't afford to move from the paid off land and home, barely scraping by and can't take the $5 to $10K real cost of relocation, family close by in the neighborhood giving free babysitting, ordinances preventing new trailer parks to be set up (seriously) or relocating trailer homes, the reasons go on and on. 

Even though America is still the land of opportunity, I can understand why some people don't want to move off the problem homestead.  Rich people buy houses on coastal points that have an 8 year remaining lifespan before they have to be condemned due to beach erosion.  I'm with Howard (reply 8, not reply 13) for my own purposes, you evaluate the risk and if you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen.  But I understand why a lot of people don't want to do the same.  Home is, well, Home, even if it sucks sometimes. 

[Louis Tully]

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[ark_ader]

The beach is a horrible place to live.  Sure it's nice to vacation there, but the salt and sand gets in everything, it's hot all the time, you have to deal with idiot tourists.  No thank you. 

After having spent 3.5 of the last 5 years in Miami, I think I'm qualified to say, "Nonsense." I mean . . . maybe if you literally lived on the beach. But typically you live by the beach and just visit it frequently. Sand does get everywhere when you visit. You shower most of it off when you're leaving the beach and then the rest when you take a real shower at home. The only place that gets any noticeable amount of unwanted sand is the car. Which you just vacuum every couple weeks. There are three months of the year in Miami where the weather is too hot. But even still we're talking low 90's. Where I worked in Southern Utah (St. George) has a few days per year that top 115 degrees, and pretty much the entire summer is over 100. Obviously there's the humid vs. dry heat issue, but that's chocolate and vanilla. I love the humidity. In any case, humid low 90's is unpleasantly warm, but not that bad. It doesn't touch 115. But that's just 3 months of the year. The rest of the year . . . like 8-9 months of the year is paradise. I'm talking 70-85 degrees 24-hours per day, 8-9 months of the year. You go out in shorts and flip-flops at 2 in the afternoon and you're perfectly comfortable. You go out in shorts and flip-flops at 2 in the morning and you're equally comfortable. And unless you're actually visiting the boardwalk or Lincoln Drive at South Beach or South Beach itself, you see no tourists ever. There are approximately 383473829 beaches in Florida, so South Beach isn't difficult to avoid.

The beach is a lovely place to live.

The beach is quarter mile away from my house and you still get sand everywhere, and it does block up the drains if you are not keeping an eye on it.

Yep a beach is a nice place to exercise your dog, still the parks are cleaner because of it, so I cannot complain.