my mom lives in utah. Any time there's a tornado within 500 miles of me, she calls me up to see if I'm ok. "did you survive the tornado?" she worriedly asks.hedgehog wrote: ↑January 30th, 2023, 9:49 am Having grown up there, believe it is still widely called Tornado Alley. Like an alley between two buildings, rather than aisle like a lane at the grocery store. Though either fit.
Tornados are uniquely interesting compared to say the area destruction of earthquakes or hurricanes. Tornados can wreak total destruction on a house wiping it clean down the foundation. And the houses on either side are fine. Then hop a block and pull the same trick again. Even if a tornado hits your neighborhood you still have a solid dice roll of escaping damage, however your neighbors will certainly need you and you may find anything from cars to bodies up in your trees.
Hope you have a basement. Of course those also flood every 5-20 years.
A tornado is like a plane crash: as long as you don't live within 1-5 miles of it, it probably didn't affect you.
My wife has lived here (The South) her entire life, and has only ever had to run for cover once back in 1989 (?). Even in April 2011, with over 362 tornadoes touching down here and elsewhere, we were not directly affected by any of them. Our power was out for a week, but we had no wind damage to our house or anywhere in our neighborhood.
A couple weeks later, I was driving somewhere and went through the area that an F5 had ripped up - one of the longest tracked tornadoes to ever hit the state. It cut a 1-2 mile wide path for 106 miles. So powerful, it sucked up pavement. The damage was surreal. I couldn't wrap my head around it - the area normally had pine and hardwoods on both sides of the road for a few miles, but the tornado had completely wiped the ground clean - like a 1-mile wide bulldozer had plowed through there. Very strange looking effect. It's hard to believe wind could do that.
The one time I got to see an actual tornado was on my birthday one year. Wife was out shopping and I got home early from work. They sent an alert while I was watching the news, so I stupidly ran outside to see it, since they said I was directly in the path. All I saw was a few swirling clouds overhead. about 5 minutes later, that same cloud did turn into a tornado that ripped up some houses about 5 miles away. I guess I was lucky, but that was as close as it got.
Incidentally, I submitted my plans for my cabin to a local engineer for a wet stamp. He produced a 45 pg report on the structural characteristics of my cabin that i submitted to the building inspector. The engineer told me it was the strongest design for a home he's ever seen, and he had no problem telling me it would withstand at least an F4 tornado. A 60 year old log home of the a similar design(1) as mine survived a 6.5 earthquake in CA, and the mortar chinking is still intact, with no major cracks in it. Another one was on mt. St. Helens when it blew its top back in the 1980's - the entire cabin was shook from its foundation and thrown in a river, but the owner was able to retrieve the structure with a crane and some heavy equipment and put it back on a foundation. The roof was missing, but the walls were completely intact.
(1) they used to design cabins like mine with rebar spikes every 4', but they have updated the design to require them every 2', so I have twice as much rebar in mine as the old ones.
