Information on tornadoes, shelters, alerts, other concerns

[Keeper]

I agree with Nicole, if you get woken up in the middle of the night by the time you got dressed and to the shelter the storm probably would have passed.

Surprisingly even in Oklahoma very few houses have tornado shelters and OK is smack dab in the middle tornado alley.

If you look at recent history..
Significant tornado events include the Super Outbreak in 1974, the more recent November 1989 Tornado Outbreak that killed 21 and injured almost 500, and the Anderson Hills Tornado that killed one and caused extensive damage in 1995.

If you are concerned you can have a shelter installed. There are several types from safe rooms to underground shelters.

[Bravo35223]

Originally Posted by Charles

The original poster wants to know what he should do in D) or 4) above if he doesn't have a home shelter.





The original poster's question remains unanswered.

Charles:

The ultimate place to be in the event of a tornado is UNDERGROUND. The reason there are few if any "public storm shelters" such as churches, schools, hospitals, public buildings, etc is that they offer little or no advantages over a regular brick home in terms of safety from a tornado. And that is why there is no government movement to build them.

If you have seen tornado damage over the years, you have seen schools, churches and other large buildings exploded into shards of splinters by tornados...Cars picked up and thrown like tinker toys hundreds of yards. One that hit Jefferson County a decade ago threw 30 vehicles into a pile like toys on a young boy's floor....Enterprise High School earlier this year was flattened like a pancake by one. And this is the reason why school systems consistently EVACUATE their schools when a storm threatens....having a high density of people in a free standing, above-ground building will increase the odds of death in the event of a direct hit. The population as a whole is better served being scattered about in multiple buildings - rather than concentrated in one.

The best way (I guess) to ultimately be safe is to buy a shelter and have it installed underground on your property.

For the rest of us, we use technology which today has become very accurate, much more accurate than a 3-day forecast - because weather radar technology has indeed become very sophisticated. And having a SAME-equipped weather radio by your bed is indeed a very good idea.

Hope this helps the original poster and BTW - Googling up Tornado Shelters will result in plenty of sites like this....

Tornado Alley Storm Shelters Inc.

[harry chickpea]

Keeper, you may need to concatenate the links from the various posts into a single post, and select out paragraphs worthy of being in that post. I think most of us won't mind if the individual attributions are skipped to make a faq post on the subject.

For the poster who wondered "why not ignore the thread and let there be multiple threads?" The reason is that some information is important for life and limb. Even those clueless enough to not know how to search, and those not willing to wade through repetitive past threads, deserve to have quick access to that info. Not only are the continuing threads time consuming for us, but they sometimes contain less information, or are less helpful, than other times.

On the subject of weather radios - one reason that I tend to be more annoyed with excess warnings is that I live near the corner of four counties. That means I get many more useless warnings than folks who live in Huntsville or some other areas. That is why I was grateful to learn of the one with more than basic programming features. I hope that link stays with the sticky.

Re: storm shelters - I strongly believe that the "safe room" above ground storm shelters are a false security. The blown away houses in an F4 are not just from wind, but from such scouring agents as tree trunks and cars. A safe room just won't hold up to a strong tornado, even though it might last through a weak one.

Predictions of where there might be tornado hot spots: As they say in the stock market, past performance may not reflect future changes... However, NOAA does keep an extensive database on past tornadoes that is pretty easy to use. Just click on the map to bring up past tornadoes in an individual county.

NOAA's National Weather Service - Birmingham, Alabama

FWIW, you can do your own rough and ready statistical estimating on if you will be affected by a tornado. For instance, Limestone County had 34 recorded tornadoes in the last 100 years. The total length of all of the tornado tracks added together is about 600 miles. Being extremely generous, to make up for any possible UNreported tornadoes, we can guess at a path width of 1/4 mile. That means that over 100 years, 150 square miles of land were affected, or an average of 1.5 sq miles per year. The land area of the county is a little less than 600 sq miles. So, on average the chance of a tornado hitting within a particular square mile during an average year might be 1 in 400 at most. The tornadoes with significant damage were about 1/2 of those listed in the database, so knock the serious concern to 1 in 800, then recognize that tornadoes skip and jump along their track, and reduce the chances to 1 in 1600. In reality, most tornadoes are only a few hundred feet wide, and the chances of being directly affected in any one year are much slimmer, I would guess along the order of 1 in 6000. If you stay in that one area over years, your chances increase slightly, but nowhere near as much as you might expect. Look up factorals and statistics and you can do the math for yourself.

[Bravo35223]

Originally Posted by harry chickpea

Keeper, you may need to concatenate the links from the various posts into a single post, and select out paragraphs worthy of being in that post. I think most of us won't mind if the individual attributions are skipped to make a faq post on the subject.
.

Wholeheartedly agreed. Keeper you are Editor of this and need to distill it down into a readable and CONCISE page of information and make it into a static sticky....take out all of the monologues etc and get it down to some FACTS and USABLE ADVICE onto a single readable page.

It will take some time, but I agree with Harry that a multipage, rambling thread will not be nearly as efficient as a "quick shot" that includes educational information, as well as practical links to equipment, radar sites, NWS sites (as referenced by Harry above) and other pertinent information that newcomers can quickly digest.

b

[Charles]

Originally Posted by bbfan

I have been told that WAAY 31 will soon offer the same service. They will call up to 5 numbers if a tornado is approaching a specified address. Should be up in the next couple of weeks I believe.

I saw some sort of service today, which will call three phones for $6.95/year. This sounds great: home phone and two cell phones. If the house power or internet (for those of us who may have phone modems) goes out then the cells are back up. Also, it seems like it fine tunes the warning areas whereas the weather radios send warnings to a wider and perhaps unnecessary area?

StormForce31.com Weather Blog » Blog Archive » Introducing WAAY-31 WeatherCall

WAAYTV.com - Huntsville, Alabama - News Weather, Sports | Save Your Family With Storm Force WeatherCall

Do we even need a weather radio?

[Olivia Shanks]

I don't live in Alabama. I live in Missouri, but we get a lot of tornadoes here as well. Around here many people who don't have shelters go to big box 24-hour stores such as Wal-Mart during a warning. I can't say how safe it is though...

[33458]

The Tornado Project Online!

This site is a collective of easy-reading, trivia and resources. It will help confirm and/or dispel information concerning tornadoes.

[Charles]

Probably a good idea to dust off this thread as extremely strong winds with a possibility of a tornado are expected tomorrow in the Tennessee Valley. I, for example, turned my trampoline upside down so it is less likely to be blown away.

From the forecast discussion (the horse's mouth):

"SYSTEM IMPACTING THE REGION OVER THE NEXT 24 HRS OR SO IS ONE OF THE
MORE ENERGETIC SYSTEMS WE HAVE SEEN RECENTLY....HAVE ISSUED A WIND ADVISORY.

GENERALLY...THINKING HAS NOT CHANGED FOR THE SEVERE WEATHER
POTENTIAL TMRW.
KINEMATICS ARE NOT IN QUESTION WITH WINDS THIS STRONG.

...THE LOW-LVL WINDS ARE SO STRONG THAT IT WILL TAKE LITTLE EFFORT TO CREATE
DAMAGING WINDS AS IT IS...BUT THE INCREASED INSTABILITIES HAVE
INCREASED OUR CONFIDENCE THAT AT LEAST SOME PORTION OF THE HUN CWFA
WILL SEE STRAIGHT-LINE WIND DAMAGE.

ISLTD TORNADOES ALSO REMAIN A
POSSIBILITY GIVEN THE STRONGLY SHEARED ENVIRONMENT."


(image not protected by copyright)

[Charles]

I learned a lot from reading this:

From radios to cell phones, tornado warnings available in many forms | TimesDaily.com | The Times Daily | Florence, AL

[Charles]

Interesting stories put together by the Huntsville Times on the 1989 tornado which struck 20 years ago today:

Tornado | Reports from The Huntsville Times - al.com

http://blog.al.com/breaking/2009/11/...he_89_tor.html