Tornados and other events

[eurydicebound]

Well, tornado season got off to a roll last week, in the vicinity of yours truly. Here at home, I pulled Will out of school early and we all went to hide in the bathtub, since the storm shelter was flooded. Oops. At David's school, he took off down two flights of stairs at a dead run to reach their tornado shelter in time in the CS building. Cue storm, rain, hail, and lots and lots of wind.

Resume scene. Danger has passed and the house is still standing, and the kids have been let out of the bathtub to comfort the dog. There is no power, but things are otherwise all right. The students come out of the CS building to the sight of their cars, with glass littering the parking lot and the roof of the concession stand from the football stadium liberally scattered across an entire row of vehicles.

Our car was three rows back. It lost three windows and has a whole bunch of little dents now from the landscaping gravel that was being stored on a pallet at the edge of the parking lot. It's really rather stunning what pebbles launched in 75+ mph winds can do.

http://www.lawton-constitution.com/ftpage/030504.pdf

That's got a picture of the parking lot David was in. The building pictured is where he has most of his classes. Our car was back behind the camera, if that makes sense.

I thought for a time that my trip to GTS was cancelled, but I've been able to make arrangements AND get my car repaired, so it's all good. Managed to make it happen for $400 rather than the $1200 plus everyone quoted me. Boo-ya.

Any way, the upshot of this is that I've been without internet since the day before that storm, and I'm now trying like crazy to get caught up. Glad to be seein' y'all again, though.

Comments

[wilthoughts.livejournal.com]

Welcome back, you were missed. :)

[mearls.livejournal.com]

This may sound kind of stupid, but up here in New England we don't really have many regular natural disasters, aside from the occasional snowstorm.

So anyway, how often do you have tornados? Are there shelters everywhere for people to hole up in?

[anaka.livejournal.com]

Tornado season runs from March through early July, though it's over typically by June for the most part. Late ones happen, but they're rare, at least here.

According to the NOAA, there are about 1,000 tornados a year on average. Most of them occur through North Texas, most of Oklahoma, up through Kansas and southern Nebraska. The average person doesn't see nearly that many, though. I think I've had roughly... ten tornado scares in my life. Of course, I spent 5 years living out of state, so make of that what you will. I probably have at least one evening a year spent watching storms on television, and one day every two-five years actually in a shelter.

I've actually only seen 1 tornado, and it dissapated before it hit the town. I have seen rotation in the clouds, which is a freaky, freaky thing. Talk about suddenly feeling like the most insignificant thing on the planet... to borrow a quote, it's real "wrath of God" type stuff. :)

Damage paths can be up to a mile wide and fifty miles long, though those are unusual. Most often they have a footprint that's maybe the size of a house or smaller, which is why they can skip through a neighborhood and utterly destroy a house here and a house there, while the next-door neighbors have minimal damages.

Selling storm shelters is a big deal here. Lots of people have them. I can think of... 4 within two blocks of me. There's almost always a public shelter in the area as well. Schools usually have something built in that they can use... basements are used too, except that very few people actually have basements where I live. Too much clay in the soil, so they crack. Shelters are usually made of metal or other materials and set into the ground, then buried.

The big public shelter in the town I live in is the football stadium, a giant concrete monstrosity the length of a football field and two stories tall. There are garages and classrooms underneath. It was built by the WPA way back when, and is the nicest one around by a wide margin. It could hold half the town if needed.

The average warning for a tornado to be imminently in your area is 12 minutes. That's the "it's on the ground and headed your way, take tornado precautions." They're working on new radar coming out around 2007 that should be able to bump that to 20 minutes.

In truth, though, people know ahead of time. Every TV station here has at least one real meteorologist on staff, with the cutting edge of radar and weather predictive software on the market. As soon as they know it's possible, they're on the air with regular programming suspended, tracking the thing through radar and the spotters on the ground (the movie, "Twister," does have some basis in reality, despite the questionable science, Cary Elwes' bad accent, and special effects). If you only have 12 minutes warning, it's because something changed REALLY fast or you weren't paying attention.

This is why, btw, there are very few fatalities associated with Oklahoma/North Texas tornadoes. Always lots of property damage, but relatively light on the injury/casualty side of things. Nothing like when they happen in Kentucky or Illinois or Florida, as they simply aren't prepared for such things.

Strange as it may seem, I can handle tornados. I've spent about a fifth of my life under a tornado watch, it feels like, and the media in the area is geared for it. The thing I can't handle is earthquakes. They freak me right the heck out, as there's no shelter you can head to for 20 minutes until it's over. Wierd.

Anyway, I rambled. Any other questions? :)

[mearls.livejournal.com]

Cool, thanks. It's funny to think of all the little things that don't necessarily come to fore when you talk to people from across the US.

We actually had a tornado touch down in my hometown a few years back, probably around 1989 or so. There was literally an empty, churned path through the forest. Luckily, it didn't hit any houses.

New England hasn't seen a really bad blizzard since 1978 or so. We had some flooding in my hometown in 1987 or so, that's about it.

Of course, I've just jinxed us to suffer some sort of catastrophe.

[thattoon.livejournal.com]

Welcome back. Glad to hear that none of you were hurt.

[themoocow.livejournal.com]

Congrats on not dying. ;)

Had any flying cows yet this year? I seem to recall reading an artical that quoted a rather high annual number of flying farm animal incidents each year in the tornado states. If you think pebbles do damage, imagine a cow flying at 75 mph. ;)

[anaka.livejournal.com]

No cows yet. :)

[thatcash.livejournal.com]

*sigh* And why do I imagine Moo, with a little cape, flying through the air in a tornado....

The thing I can't handle is earthquakes. They freak me right the heck out, as there's no shelter you can head to for 20 minutes until it's over. Wierd.

It's probably because you haven't lived with them your entire life. For me, earthquakes have grown to "eh. Whatever. I have my earthquake kit...bring it on."

Glad to hear that you and family are ok.

[winterhawk.livejournal.com]

Yeah, same here. I look at it this way: I've lived in California all my life, and during that time I've experienced one major earthquake (Loma Prieta, 6.8, in 1989, where I was less than 50 miles from ground zero) and dozens of minor earthquakes of the "oh, cool, the ground's shaking" variety. Most earthquakes don't cause major damage, and even the ones that do are often as not in some other part of the state (such as the one they had in Paso Robles a few months ago, which we felt as an "oh, cool" type quake up here).

They're just not scary anymore when you live with them that long. Now, tornados, on the other hand, or hurricanes--::shudder::--no, thanks!

[elissa-carey.livejournal.com]

Glad you made it through okay. :) I think that's one of the few things I don't miss about Texas: the damn tornado season.

[wilthoughts.livejournal.com]

It's not like we have a thousand tornadoes a year ripping through population centers. Very few actually hit where a large population lives, something about the air pressure or something or other.

In any case, in the last few years a tornado has ripped through downtown Fort Worth and downtown Oklahoma City. The Fort Worth one actually jumped over my childhood home, although I was living in San Francisco at the time.

The biggest I ever saw was an F5 class (the biggest they make) that was ripping a mile-wide path north through central TX. I happened to be driving home from Austin at the time, and so I was driving parallel to this black, mile-wide maelstrom for about an hour. I was just happy that it didn't turn my way, because I don't think I could have outrun it very easily.

[stoictruebrujah.livejournal.com]

Damn - I'm glad you're ok.

I remember the nights we used to spend huddled in our Nebraska farmhouse basement.

It always smelled funny down there, and I thought I saw a weird bug once.

I miss that farm.

Where do you live again?

[anaka.livejournal.com]

I live in southwest Oklahoma, near Lawton.

[anidada.livejournal.com]

Oy. Glad you're all okay, and that the car is recovering. Also, thanks for the description of life in Tornado Alley -- I had no idea. It's rather neat, and also freaky. :)