f13.net

Anyone else get zapped by a tornado last night?  I remember it like it was last night.  House shaking, lightning going off like flashbulbs, me racing for the basement as my sunroom was sucked into the night.

Seriously though, had at least two folks die about 2 miles from my house. I live in east TN btw. I have no electricity and fewer trees.
My plum trees, which have never had more plums, are badly damaged as is part of my roof.   I've been cleaning all morning.  I just wanted to do something normal, to get my head out of what has been an eventuful 16 hours or so.
So I post my 'humorous' snark on f13.

I hope everyone in the path yesterday and last night is doing OK.

The more I read about this, the more amazing it sounds. Like possibly bigger than the 1974 outbreak that still has people pissing down their legs almost 40 years later. Very scary (but infinitely fascinating).

Did something happen?

God registered his general disapproval of the South, in the form of violent funnels of wind.

Man! Glad to hear you're ok. I have family down in The Bible Belt. If only we could have had some warning, some method of predicting problems with weather...or climate...changes....

http://www.alternet.org/newsandviews/article/573674/insane_storms:_science_saw_it_coming,_and_yes,_it's_part_of_climate_change/

 :sad:

Yea, I live in the path of that monstrosity, I was being flip.  Fortunately the supercells went north and south of me, just barely though.  The coverage on this stuff was frightening, like the hail core that rose to 45k feet and the 80mph winds at 3 miles.

Just posted this video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ohIVzIZLuQ&sns=fb) in the Useless Conversation thread but figured this is as good a place to repost it as any. Some crazy fucker took this in Tuscaloosa yesterday.

Yeah, I like how Bill Paxton there is driving his car toward it.  Geez.

Gamestop going to get demolished at the 2:45 mark - Think of the games!!

My parents had one last year in Wood County, Ohio that destroyed the high school I went to in the 90s.  Four houses down from their house (less than 50yds) were simply gone - slabs and basements only.  I can't explain how utterly surreal it is to drive through there now, seeing how things changed in a moment.  Houses and trees gone; mother nature doing her thing.  They made it out okay with about $30k damage total, but there are people that lost everything, including family.  

My dad found some weird stuff while walking around, like hard drive platters and the circutboard from the inside of a 360 controller.  How much force is needed to strip away the casings from those things?  Happened in the middle of the night, no warning.  They said that people are right - it sounds exactly like a freight train bearing down on you.

Hoping all make it out okay.

Not at all making light of this weather, but this is the type of shit I love. I'd be a stormchaser in a heartbeat if it paid well and would not have to go back to school to be a weatherman. I am kinda warped when it comes to disturbed weather, I like being in it - the more insane the more excited I get. Hurricane Wilma while living in South Beach was my high water mark so far.

That said, I do feel for the people that had to go through this. The storm and aftermath is fucking horrible. Weather is exciting, property damage and casualties complete opposite.

Alabama just said fuck it and shut down the University. If you like your grade, keep it. If not, take exams later.

Students rejoice with booze if they can find any.

Sounds like their AD exported the standards for the football team to cover the rest of the student body  :grin:

Impact damage.

I dunno I drove through Alabama a few years ago I bet I wouldn't notice the difference.

There was a fucking amazing story on ATC earlier today about a boy who was literally sucked out of his father's hands as a tornado ripped apart their house, but was deposited safely in their driveway.  Goddamn lucky kid.

http://www.npr.org/player/v2/mediaPlayer.html?action=1&t=1&islist=false&id=135812706&m=135812675

Why the hell were there still so many cars in the parking lot in the twister video?

Because driving away from a tornado is generally a losing proposition, especially in a supercell.  Hunker down in the most solid and/or underground structure available, and cross your fingers.

--Dave

To elaborate on what Mahrin said.  They're moving faster than you ever will in your car and will pick up and crumple said car as easily as you do whatever piece of mail is lying near you.  Sheet metal and glass aren't an effective defense.   Those storm chasers? They're fucking crazy.

Tornado damage near me:

http://kennethboone.smugmug.com/News

I have heard of several looters being arrested so far. They were mainly stealing copper and electronics from abandoned/destroyed homes.

If most US news I've watched today is any indication hundreds dead isn't as important or interesting as some couple getting married a thousand miles away.  :mob:

That's because it was only rednecks in flyover states.  :awesome_for_real:

Don't get me fucking started.  :tantrum:

*phone rings*

Hello?  Japan?  Sure, I'll put them on...

Pfft, Japan. So they got a little wet.

I'm still without power but the power company is right down the road so maybe in a day or so. 
Our county lost six total including a husband and wife.  As bad as it is here, Alabama is worse. 

Cops and firemen are keeping the fucking disaster tourists out of the hit communities thankfully.  Our supply chain manager drove almost an hour down to my area to 'rubberneck' as she said.  I guess folks are curious since this area almost always has mild weather, but it pisses me off since I can look out of my front window and see part of my house across the road.

True, since in Alabama the husband and wife would have also been siblings.  :rimshot:

Too soon?

Let me reply as Chandler Bing;  "Could it BE any sooner?"
/Ok, I Lol'ed

I lost one friend of mine, confirmed. Another is missing.  I'm not hopeful.

I'm going to bite my tongue at some of the  jokes. Snark loses some of its pop when you get affected.

I'm sorry to hear that, Sigil.

60% of my family lives in the affected areas and we still haven't heard back from them.  Just hoping.

Not sure because I only know him through forums, chat and Private messages on occasion, but Dark Vengeance (long time Lummie, h20, and Corp person) who might have been near the tornado bullseye.. He lives in Huntsville, which is in the blue circle on this map (http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&hl=en&msa=0&msid=204109457876052646118.0004a1f351192cfc2ed63&source=embed&ll=33.696923,-85.814209&spn=4.395723,7.064209&z=7):He worked in Huntsville.

(http://i44.photobucket.com/albums/f27/taolurker/HuntsvillewhereDvworks.jpg)

Haven't  seen posts from him in a couple of days, but I had seen a local paper near him about the jiu jitsu medal a friend of his got (http://www.cullmantimes.com/localsports/x1075326093/LOCAL-SPORTS-O-Brien-wins-jiu-jitsu-gold-medal-at-Pan-Am-Games) and their front page story is now talking about the downtown area there being demolished... Downtown torn apart (http://www.cullmantimes.com/local/x1250117298/Downtown-staples-dealing-with-loss).

Although I am in pain and sort of nearing disability, at least I'm not dealin' with that. I hope DV is ok, and a part of me almost thinks his name is Lee, which was a guy interviewed in the story (although I might be thinking of some other internet forum person I know who was named Lee).

I hope we see a post from DV that he's ok.

Lots of people still without power.  Friend of mine there managed to post to FB Thursday from his iPhone that he wasn't going to have electricity for at least 7 days.

--Dave

When Ike blew through Kentucky back in '09 he knocked out power for several areas in Cincinnati for 2-3 WEEKS.  Some households went for as long as a month and a half, because lines that went from power poles to individual houses were last priority.  (Another reason to live in a suburb  :awesome_for_real:)   I imagine the same thing is going to be the case in Huntsville.

It could be even longer than that time frame if the tornadoes destroyed any high tension towers.

I just checked Steam, DV was online as of 3 hours ago.

I'll try to remember to chat with him tonight if he's around.

When Wilma blew across FL, South Beach got a good slap down in the wind dept. I was without power for 8 days. Charged my phone in the car when I could, beach was closed for the first 2 days for dmg assessment so travel around was pretty much paralyzed as well as having huge cypress trees down. However, for the first time, you got to see pretty much everyone in your apt building since we were all grilling out trying to eat our refrigerated stuff first then frozen. But yeah, no one died or was hurt that I knew, but I fully feel for anyone having to go without power for more than a day or two. Good luck to everyone without power.

fake edit: now that I remember it, the apartments across from mine got power a day before my block. It was rather amusing to all the sudden hear cheers from that part of the beach while my part had a collective sigh. Also was a bit creepy walking from there to my block... we were literally the wrong side of the road.

Don't forget to bring the noise.

DV says he lost a window on his garage door, and that's about it.  He also appreciates the concern.

Yes, I saw him on other forums sometime mid week this week, and his area lost power for a significant period, with little to no real damage to his home. It was really close to him though.

So, did everyone here make it through yesterday?

Only those who were saved.  :why_so_serious:

I always tell people to retire in Joplin.  I need to check on a few friends who live there.

Hope all your friends are OK.  My insurance adjuster is coming to my house Friday so hopefully they cover the damage.  I actually went to FMEA's temp center and registered.  After the horror stories of Katrina, I thought it was a fairly painless process.  So now I'm officially a disaster victim.  Yay.

Heard from a friend who lives in Joplin.  He and his family are okay but he said the tornado only missed them by a couple of blocks.  That's just way too  :ye_gods: for me.  And seeing entire houses turned into kindling just freaks me out.  Made me think about where we'd go in our house if a tornado came through and the only options are the downstairs half-bath and/or the closet under the stairs.  I don't think we'd have time to get into the crawlspace and I doubt I could get the dog down there anyways, so closet or bath it is. 

While I can't attest to a fast moving tornado, I found myself unconsciously moving slowly to the middle part of my apt in the few hurricanes I weathered through. Winds pick up and you move a bit aways from the windows, it increases and you move further until you are halfway between front and back windows - then you instinctively move to rooms without possible shards of stabbing pain. Of course, in terms of a tornado rendering your house into vampire killing stakes, I'd be at a loss other than to harken back to the story of the three little pigs.  :grin:

We had the top half of a tree fall down and take out the phoneline. Several neighbors lost trees, and one got their car smooshed. So pretty standard for the hellacious late spring storms of the past decade. Another few years here, and I won't have any trees left to worry about!

A tornado can import one from elsewhere in your neighborhood though...

So the winds can be even faster without resistance and nothing in the way to slow down the flying van heading down the street!  :why_so_serious:

Oh, I believe it.  Last year we had a tornado warning in the area because one was moving through the Elgin area (aka about 10 miles SW) and it was moving NE.  Skies got that freaky greenish color and everything was still as hell.  I found myself putting things in the half-bath like the dogs leash and my purse "just in case" I needed to be in there quickly. 

LOL!  The only problem is that the importing process is done by a sub-contractor to the sub-contractor, meaning your newly imported tree is now in a gazillion pieces and the directions got lost in the mail.  Anything which can just snap a tree with a foot diameter+ is scary.

Aw.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/yblog_thelookout/20110520/us_yblog_thelookout/adorable-lady-finds-missing-cat-during-interview-outside-tornado-ruined-home

Sounds like poor Joplin, MO could be in the firing line again today. Maybe a big EF-5 will clean up some of the debris?

Dear everyone within about a 100 miles radius of Oklahoma City: Get into your cellars. Now.

It has occurred to me that spending my formative years in tornado alley has made me maybe a little too cavalier about the whole issue. My whole sky turned an eerie shade of orange on Sunday evening and I didn't really think to do anything other than snap a couple pictures.

On the other hand, I live in a second-story apartment. Takes about five seconds to hide in the bathroom and there's not a whole lot else I can do.

Wow.  This has to be the craziest tornado video (http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/us/2011/05/24/vo.ok.piedmont.tornado.kfor.KFOR?hpt=T1) I've ever seen.  The footage of that telephone pole flying in the air is just nuts. 

Dear Mother Nature-
If it  isn't too much trouble, can you knock down the OKC Thunder arena next time you blow some tornadoes through? No need to kill anyone (but if you must please start with Clay Bennett)- just knock it the fuck down and make them play in a high school or something. Thanks!


Seattle Sonics fan

The Great Plains are uhhh Plains for a good damned reason.
It's like in South Florida, how every other plant is either a derivative of sawgrass, mangrove, or palm tree... 'cause that's the only thing left standing typically.   Mother Nature throws in the towel long before we do.

Storm chasers are insane.  Great videos, absolutely insane videographers.

That being said, the video that I saw on the news last night of the semi-trailer just getting shredded was so  :ye_gods:

Got lucky last night, Tornado hit Bedford, Indiana, about 20 miles south of Bloomington, Indiana (Indiana University), the others hit across the border in Edgar County, IL (more like radar saw funnel clouds), but we did get a bunch of trees knocked over.  I lost guttering and maybe some shingles, so calling the roof dudes.  It blew over us then hit Bedford, but it is a crap shoot when they start calling the warnings.

The one in Joplin, MO is scary, that hospital looks like ours, and it is FUBAR'ed, they said it happened so quickly they couldn't get the patients out of the rooms and some were sucked out of bed and out the window, then again, it tore a whole in the building and sucked some out that way too...

Glad you made it OK Jimbo.  We just left another tornado warning down here.  I lost my power for a minute and the interstate got so much hail it looked like snow.  But looks like it's dying down now.

FMEA declined to give me aid so I hope the insurance adjuster is good to me tomorrow.

Jimbo they said on the news tonight that there were reports of baseball size hail in Indianapolis, IN  :ye_gods:
Glad you came through okay.

Local News Pics (http://www.wthitv.com/gallery/weather/weather_pics/Photos-Viewer-submitted-pics-May-25), scroll to #61 and you will see the size of the hail we got.  Three tornadoes near my area, we were lucky we didn't get hit like Joplin did, in my county the west and north got hit hard from wind and hail, I'm lucky with minor roof damage (I hope, haven't had the roof guys out yet).  Hope everyone does okay with crazy weather!  I'm wondering why we don't build house better for tornadoes, kinda like Florida builds the new houses so they survive hurricanes and flooding better. 

Can you build houses that can withstand a tornado though?  I mean an F2 tornado has wind speeds between 113 - 156 miles per hour, and an F2 tornado relatively isn't that strong.  Meanwhile, category 5 hurricanes only start at 156mph, and once they hit land they drop down from that quite fast. 

Correct me if I am off here, but structurally, buildings can be built to withstand pretty high wind speeds. It's not so much the winds that do the damage but the projectiles the wind is throwing into the buildings.

I've heard that before and it's probably true, but there's also the case that higher winds make projectiles hit the buildings with much harder force.  Didn't that Home Depot that got destroyed have concrete walls?  If so, what housing material would stand up to a tornado (and its projectiles) better than concrete?

Tornadoes are wierd things.  My mom told me a story from when we lived in SC and a tornado went right down a street, destroying everything in site except for a completely grass building.  It ripped all the trees and everything from all sides of the glass restaurant, but didn't touch any of the glass panes.

Very tall concrete walls are susceptible to shear winds.  The roof on our local ones are just standard tin warehouse roofs and nothing special.  A home depot would be one of the last buildings I'd want to be in, because they're just glorified warehouses.

Home Depots are CMU (cinder block) walls on very tall, thin columns with corrugated metal roof structures and very deep, very long trusses, like all big-box stores.  CMU can be punctured by a 115# woman with a ball-peen hammer.  It's not withstanding anything tossed-about by a C5 Tornado.  As Lant said, it's one of the last places I'd want to be in any severe storm.   They're built to withstand high winds only for toppling purposes. 

Sure you CAN build buildings to withstand incredibly high-speed winds, water and other natural forces.. but that kind of expendature only goes into shelters, not your every-day store.  It costs too  much unless it's mandated.

The trick is to build a hobbit hole.

Honestly... that is not that bad of an idea. Of course, cel reception would be a nightmare... but yeah.

Someone tried that in Bend, Oregon.  Last I heard they were facing foreclosure because of the housing market crash.  The houses were pretty neat though.

Or, like the guy I heard interviewed on NPR today, bury an old bus in a hill behind your house then use that for shelter.   His brother did the same thing with an old van.   Certainly cheaper than building a whole concrete shelter underground.

If you need somewhere to hide during a tornado and have the option: Banks.  Reinforced concrete walls and often ceilings, the closest a common commercial building gets to being a bunker.

--Dave

For tornadoes, you want to bury. Not the best choice for hurricanes, though. :)

For a fun building, check out the Vehicle Assembly Building (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicle_Assembly_Building). It's down at KSC, and it's where they put together rockets before rolling them out to the launch pad. (These days it's where they mate the Shuttle with the Stack).

I'm talking about doing the entire house minus the front face below grade, ideally partway up the slope in the southern exposure of a hill, with most of the structure surrounded by weeping tile.  You build your living rooms on the exposed end, and your bathroom, utility rooms, and bedrooms in the back.  It's pretty much wind proof and is actually a very energy efficient design.

Flooding is an issue, and you'd have to bring in dirt to build up the hills in most places. You'd also have to anchor it with plants to prevent erosion, which means you need to have regional plants that'll do the job.

Dirt and stone are very good insulators, and there's a reason they put tornado shelters underground. There's just a lot of places where that's not an efficient solution, although you did manage to come up with a pretty good design on the whole 'wanting some actual damn windows' front. My wife would love a bedroom with no windows. :) She likes it dark and cave-like.

Hmm. I wonder how my dream hurricane home would hold up to tornadoes? Steel framed, integrated metal hurricane shutters -- the wall facings and roof would be the real problem. Pretty sure a tornado would leave the frame standing, but not much else. Certainly rip the roof off.

Burying the house is a decent idea, but I'd hate to deal with all the water issues, and I don't just mean flooding.  You've got a basin on the top and sides now, not just the foundation.  Think about how damp and dank some basements that aren't built properly get.  It's something you'd have to really focus on.

As for the Hurricane house.. you could design that steel building so your roof structure stays in place.. but no matter what you do the sheathing's coming off.  The sheathing of your walls as well, most likely.  Still, it's not the wind that does the bulk of the damage in a tornado, it's the missiles it's carrying.  All that timber, trash and -at Joplin Speeds- CARS that are whirling about at 250+mph.

The last few days had me wondering about relative wind speeds between hurricanes and tornadoes.  A c5 Hurricane has windspeeds "In excess of" 156 mph (250 kph).  That only rates as an F2 tornado.  An F5 like Joplin has to have winds between 261-318 mph (420-512 kph).   That's damn scary.

The Fujita Scale (http://www.tornadoproject.com/fscale/fscale.htm) indicates that an F5 will even badly damage reinforced concrete structures.. which explains why the Hospital in Joplin didn't stand much of a chance.

Sorry we cancelled the shuttle program NASA, can you turn off the weather machine now?

Tornadoes will have faster winds than hurricanes, so the immediate area they touch is more likely to be damaged.  Hurricanes though span a mind-boggling area, and are sustained.  While their winds can do significant damage, they also bring water damage and can ravage an hour for twelve continuous hours.

Some building techniques are probably applicable to both, I imagine they have different requirements as well.

Some of the larger hurricanes, while having sustained wins @ only the F2 scale (in terms of tornadoes), do show significant microbursts inside the storm as well as having the winds do complete 180s in an instant. I'll look for the webpage I read that on a little later today. I was reading up on it when Wilma blew through southern Florida out to the Atlantic and we were all left wondering how a storm that came across the state still had that much strength to do that kind of damage.

Tornados have the added problems of the axis of rotation being relatively small which leads to a very large pressure differential between the wind-wall and the eye and creates a lot of suction. A tornado is not just blowing things over, it is actually sucking things up. I have seen pictures of small ponds having almost their entire volume of water (and fish inside) picked up by a tornado that went directly over them.

A tornado is nature's wet-dry vac (with the outlet plug open).

No. They still stack up rocket bits in there. :)

The sheer scale and power of what it takes to get shit into space is hard to miss when you tour the Pad and VAB, since it's full of things like "Oh, we dump 20,000 gallons of water into the blast pit at launch. What? For heat? Oh gods no. It's to muffle the sound. Otherwise the Shuttle would explode. It gets really loud, you know"

Didnt they report that the tornado in Joplin even took down a number of steel framed buildings?

Never make nerds angry.  It's one of the classic blunders.

(http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1143749/steel_construction.jpg)

Steel construction may mean many things.  Some of those things are not what one would assume.

Finally, a realistic explanation!

Spoilered for size.  :ye_gods:

That should be spoilered for more than just the size.  :ye_gods:

Apparently several tornados touched down in western Massachusettes today. The most well publicized landed in Springfield (http://www.boston.com/news/local/breaking_news/2011/06/thunderstorms_r_1.html).

Tornado over the Connecticut river in Springfield: http://www.thebostonchannel.com/r-video/28099922/detail.html

A pair of idiots + car + mobile phone camera = http://youtu.be/636M8gOEtao
Note the change of tone from "Haha it's a little tornado! Sweet!" to "Oh fuck it's a tornado! We're gonna die!"

Someone crawling out from under the stairs in the garage he work(s/ed) at, seconds after a tornado went overhead: http://youtu.be/SSPMOoAEys8
NB: There is some strong language, as you might expect. Here's a vid from a little later by the same guy - http://youtu.be/MZXsDc072yg

The other issue with tornadoes is not just the wind but the very high velocity projectiles that often accompany those winds. Its all fun and games if your house can handle the wind speeds but cannot handle the Chevy truck flying through the air. They make reinforced tornado shelter rooms but still by far the safest is a root celler/basement/buried structure. Designing a building to handle the wind speeds is very doable but trying to armor a house to withstand the high velocity flying debris without looking like an armored box is a bit more tricky.