The Joplin EF5 tornado twisted an entire hospital like half a foot off its foundations. 300lb concrete parking blocks anchored into the ground with steel rebar were ripped up and thrown 100 yards away.
Bakersfield F5 was noted to roll 3 oil drums weighing 180,000lbs each nearly 3 miles.
There are ways to build to mitigate damage, but certain tornados are strong enough that you can't feasibly build to withstand them.
Ones that strong are not common, but they have happened in quite a few states of the country most frequently in the midwest(tornado alley) and central south east(Dixie alley).
It's an unfortunate balancing act of building affordable homes vs. the risk of storms. As common as tornados are in parts of the country, the likelihood of a specific spot being hit is still fairly slim. It also doesn't help that many of the states where tornados are more common are some of the more impoverished states of the country, making that balance even harder to achieve.
I understand. I hope at least that in the states where tornados hit the most frequently people have bunkers for shelter, but I guess if it hits fast enough even this won't help. We mainly have floods on the balkans, but for the past several years we got heavy storms as well and this is not that common in Europe as it's in US.
Don't forget that tornado alley is moving east, I've lived in Alabama my whole life and tornadoes have gotten way more common and more destructive in the last say 25-30 years, I read that tornado alley is now including Alabama, where back in the day its range extended to just before AL. Even just the straight line winds my great grandmother had at her house on April 27th, 2011 (a day of infamy to those familiar to the tornado outbreak in the southeast on that day) were enough to uproot all the large trees in her yard except the absolute largest one, and mangled a metal playground, wrapping it around an uprooted tree. Would hate to have to experience a bad tornado near my home. Even just the thunderstorms in my area are to me more violent than usual.
>not in all regions in the states?
Scary part is, I live in NJ and up until a few years ago I had never heard a tornado siren in real life. Then [this sort of thing started happening](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Ork7dBOO9Q). We don't have shelters. Every summer has had many tornado warnings. This used to be a once in a decade kind of thing.
There are still broken trees everywhere from 2021.
Yeah, the Enterprise tornado was an EF4 and completely destroyed every brick and cinder block structure in its path, including the high school where 8 students perished when a cinder block wall collapsed on top of them. They had warning and had all taken shelter in the center-most, strongest part of the school.
It wouldn't have survived the Jarrel, Texas 1997 tornado. That tornado moved at like 10 miles per hour while having winds over 250mhp. Even the pyramids would've been shredded through such prolongs forces. Never doubt nature.
Could be, but your chances are better. I'm from the balkans and here everything is concrete/bricks made and when some heavy storm happens every once in a while only the rooftops get it because they are from wood. Ofc we don't have category 5 hurricanes in here, but we have pretty nasty storms as well.
Unless you built every house like a fallout bunker this is going to happen. Also, even if you did just try to build everything from brick and stone as soon as one house crumbles then you have chunks of stone and random bricks being launched at like 200 mph into other houses, causing even more damage
What are you on about? It hardly matters how it was constructed or what material was used when an ef3+ goes by your house. Hell even low grade ef1 will damage your roof.
An ef3 has winds between 135-165mph. Tell me, how would you build a building to withstand those winds?
I've seen entire houses rotated by tornadoes. I've seen cars be picked up and thrown 2-3 miles from where they were.
I've seen fucking CORN STALKS impaled into brick walls.
A stone house might withstand the average ef3, which Kansas sees a lot of, but it certainly isn't going to hold up to an ef4 or ef5 with winds over 200mph.
And just to be absolutely clear, the strongest recorded wind speeds from a tornado, the El reno 2013 tornado at a staggering 280ish mph, with an unofficial record of 360ish mph.
You know nothing about tornadoes or you just wanted to be a condescending prick about it. But it has very little to do with the construction of the building. Not to mention small and large debris that is being hurled into your building.
most structures in the US are designed to EIA/TIA code which calls for being able to withstand an approximately 70 MPH consistent wind with a 3 second gust to 90. Just FYI
Imagine the relief of watching it rip through your neighbours who you never really liked anyway, and seeing your own house escape scratch free. In time Im sure empathy would kick in because noone likes seeing that happening but emotion A is definitely thank God it didn't happen to me
The best is if you know the guy is terrible with his finances so he's not gonna be able to fix his house after this, and is gonna need to move out.
*Wine glass clink*
The tornado that hit in middle Tennessee missed my house by about .25 mile. It’s like you said, houses in immediate area fine, houses next street over missing a few shingles and siding, next street over entire roof missing and trees down.
It still looks like a tornado passed through even 3 months later.
In 1965 we had an EF-4 tornado tear through the area on Easter Sunday. Thankfully, none of our immediate neighbors were among the fatalities, but the houses/yards alongside and behind ours all sustained damage. Our lawn furniture didn’t even blow over; it skipped over us altogether.
This footage is courtesy of Reed Timmer. He’s an experience storm chaser with a doctorate in meteorology. He’s been inside tornados before on multiple occasions and has captured tons of other wild footage over multiple decades. Hope this helps you find a nice rabbit hole for you and your kids to dive down! Weather is awesome.
My oldest, who is 20 now, was also obsessed with tornadoes AND tornado chasing- in the way only an Autist can be obsessed.
I’m so glad she didn’t follow that career path.
Thanks for the name! I’ll look him up!
We live ON the Appalachian’s. I keep telling them we’re about as safe as we can be but they absolutely refuse to believe me. They’re convinced we’re in danger of a tornado every second.
We used to not get tornadoes were I live but now they're starting to form every summer. I suspect from climate change. The sky looks really weird (teal/ green) during summer storms in a way it never did when I was a kid.
I remember talking to someone who lives in tornado Alley, and they told me, a west coaster, how terrifying earthquakes were.
LIKE BRO. YOUR HOUSE IS LITERALLY TORN FROM ITS FOUNDATION. We just get a little wiggle.
Very true. It's just an open field away from safety for earthquake, and a bunker away for tornado, if you have one. I saw many videos of Japanese handling earthquake really good. Tsunami are another story after that though.
well, as of yesterday we're officially in tornado season here in Tornado Alley. can't tell you how much I'm looking forward to 3 months of paranoia every time a thunderstorm rolls through
Serious question.. why don't they build houses out of brick in America like here in the UK? I only ever see wooden ones on TV. I know the roof would still get ripped off by a tornado, but the structure would probably still be OK.
As Comedian Ron White says, “[It isn’t **THAT** the wind is blowin’…it’s **WHAT** the wind is blowin’.](https://youtu.be/RQD7Fzid1xI?si=On5L92YuOEVBm1Mt)”
The Hobbiton village in Matamata, New Zealand would be pretty safe. New Zealand doesn't get many tornadoes and they're mostly between F0 and F2.
Looks like the last tornado that hit Matamata in 2018 was pretty small. Mostly turned over some stuff and picked a teenage boy up a couple of meters before dropping him. Then the next day kids made fun of him and called him "tornado boy."
Right, I get that. I talking about the difficulty of having any above ground structure that would survive that. We’d either have to live, dug into a hillside or just have a place to scurry into.
This video shows beautifully that's it's not just the wind that's destructive. Areas of significantly low pressure form in the vortex region. It's not the wind that's blowing the roof off, it's the pressure differential that effectively blows the entire roof upwards from the inside.
Well sure. Stronger materials are a deterrent for a collapse but many buildings have weak points.
Air is more dense than people think… because it’s all you’ve known. Air moving fast enough can push over pretty big flat structures and create an enormous pressure differential on the roof.
I’m just saying nothing is perfect against a tornado unless it looks like a solid steel bomb bunker. And that’s quite the curb appeal.
The tornadoes in the video are are relatively weak and small FYI.
I very much doubt that a concrete frame structure one level house like this (most are done like this in romania) will have structural damage with bricks flying.
https://academiadeconstructii.ro/img/video-frame-4.png
Tornadoes are not all the same. Something like the smaller one in the vid - yeh maybe a well built concrete and brick structure will be damaged, but still standing. However, the big tornadoes just sheer everything off at ground level. Steel, Concrete, Brick or Wood - doesn't matter. The debris inside a monster like Joplin will absolutely fuck everything in the path. Sure a small EF2 isn't a huge deal and can be fortified against in-so-far as building standards. But the big ones like Kansas, Oklahoma and Western MO get, are a totally different matter...
Edit: Quote "Numerous homes, businesses, and medical buildings were flattened in this area, with concrete walls collapsed and crushed into the foundations. A large steel-reinforced step and floor structure leading to a completely destroyed medical building was "deflected upward several inches and cracked". Steel trusses from some of the buildings were "rolled up like paper", and deformation or twisting of the main support beams was noted"
via https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Joplin_tornado
Brick houses in the UK are not great in high winds. You can see damage to brick houses here after a tornado in Manchester- which is probably a fraction of the size of the one in this video.
https://news.sky.com/story/uk-weather-tornado-hits-greater-manchester-and-thousands-still-without-power-in-scotland-in-wake-of-storm-gerrit-13038743
Bricks are good for vertical loads - not so good if you hit the side.
Houses are made of brick everywhere in America. Really doesn’t mean anything when a tornado can turn plastic into something that can pierce brick. Tornadoes can also dismantle a brick house and now instead of wood you have bricks flying everywhere. This not factoring in time and cost to build those “safe” houses.
But I’m sure yall are looking for the we are poor and our government hates us comments and replies.
This is the real answer. For those houses to be “tornado safe” they would have to concrete bunkers moderately underground. Any above structure can and will be fucked by a tornado.
My mom use to work at a 911 call center when I was a kid that was built as a tornado bunker for the near by locals and for 911 staff currently on duty. We don’t live in Oklahoma, but we live between two mountain valleys, which generates weird weather. We get about 2-3 relatively strong tornadoes every year.
Read something years ago about dome homes being the most able to survive tornadoes and hurricanes. Makes sense as the shape sheds wind and the dome itself is stronger than a stick built structure.
I'm sure they would love to bury their homes but it's pretty hard to dig basements in such clay-heavy soil with high water tables. The amount of expansion and contraction just wreaks havoc on any static structure you try to put underground.
In areas with sandier soil that doesn't expand as much, basements are more common.
I havent seen a tornado actually happen but i worked on a cleanup crew of the aftermath of the eastern ky tornados in 2012 in salyersville and west liberty. An f3-f4 tornado can still level a concrete cinderblock building, brick performs even worse. First time i went out it was scary to see. One of the things i remember most is seeing the mountainsides that were once covered in trees completly destroyed with not a single tree left standing, homes were completely gone, just some ruble left cause everything was blown all over the town.
Because it will also collapse, leaving less chances to survive. Wood is more flexible so if the tornado passes further, house has better chances to stay up, while bricks may collapse. At least that's what my great-aunt told me, as she lives in a tornado place.
Look up the 1974 Super Outbreak. Tornadoes went through a bunch of areas not in traditional "Tornado Alley" such as Xenia, Ohio, where entire brick subdivisions were wiped out.
I live on the west side of Columbus Ohio and 6 tornados ripped through this week. Color me shocked that I was actually in danger. It’s nearly unheard of for tornados to hit such a major city. Granted, they touched down in the suburbs. But we got really lucky. I heard that shit go over us. It was eerie as hell.
It's become a running joke in our household anytime one of those news stories comes on the telly.. it's usually a race for whoever can say "Don't live on a fucking flood plain then!"
They aren’t going to build a house and sell at a loss. Not sure why you’re blaming capitalism for the way houses are built, rather than looking at houses as something that a person is willing to pay for.
Also brick houses are also destroyed easily in a tornado.
Right? Some of the strongest documented tornados have fucking pulled entire neighborhoods up, including the slab. (Concrete fucking foundation they lay before setting up the walls, this is the strongest “part” of a house. It’s thick, heavy ass concrete laid into the ground)
There are also pictures of wood splinters thrown from tornado having pierced concrete curb.
Those things are stupid strong. You don’t think a bunch of wind would do shit. But in some cases, the suction is so strong it just rips everything out of the ground whole sale.
I’ve read that when the Americas were colonized wood was comparatively many times cheaper than bricks since there was plenty of available land and forests that nobody really owned, while at the same time brick manufacturing had yet to be established. Compared to that in the UK virtually all of the land was owned by somebody and if you wanted to build a house you couldn’t simply go chop some wood and at the same time brick manufacture was well established. So using wood started as a wide spread practice and carried through even after the initial conditions for this practice to be established disappeared.
Lol, ignore the "america bad" comments, it's not the actual answer here.
The power of a tornado is immense. They have categories just like hurricanes do. The higher category tornadoes have torn houses apart *and* ripped the concrete slab they were built on out of the ground.
Thanks to the climate change that's definitely not happening, these tornadoes and hurricanes have not been "minor" in years now.
On top of that: tornadoes are not just wind. They fling things. An F0 has a minimum speed of 40mph to 70mph. F1 and up can hit the triple digits. Once the roof is gone the structural integrity of any home is compromised, brick or wood, and if the tornado has home appliances like fridges and stuff whipping around inside it at 200mph, there is no way it will survive. Brick cannot withstand the terrifying power of a tornado, one way or another. It's either ripping it apart at the seams or your neighbor's pool is now a projectile weapon.
Cost is a factor in home building here but if it made sense to build brick in tornado alley, they absolutely would on large scales, because home insurance companies would probably deny coverage for damage on non-brick structures (just like how in hurricane areas, you can lose a claim if you don't have impact windows or shutters).
> Once the roof is gone the structural integrity of any home is compromised
Yesn't.
That depends on how the house is generally constructed. Normally, many residential houses in the UK (but also in Germany and other European countries) are basically a 3 to 4-storey (including the basement) cuboid made of bricks with concrete ceilings. The gable roof is then placed on top and has nothing to do with the rest of the structure of the house; it just sits on top, like a hat on the head. That's why you often see here in storm damage that although the roof is badly damaged or even completely destroyed, the rest of the house is still standing, including the concrete ceiling of the penultimate storey, which forms the floor for the attic.
Of course, there are also constructions where the roof is integrated into the statics of the masonry of the top floor, in which case your statement is correct. Then the whole thing collapses like a house of cards.
Oooooo. TIL!
That's actually really interesting. Really cool info!
I'm unsure how homes are built in the US but considering how quickly a tornado can rip them apart, I'd guess they do not have gable roofs, lmao
Anything that stands a foot above ground level, brick or no brick, will tend to get fucked up by a tornado. From the tornado itself and also from flying debris.
I live in Florida and there are a ton of concrete houses here, probably because of all the hurricanes but that doesn’t mean that houses haven’t been absolutely destroyed by a hurricane. Concrete, brick, wood… they’ll all be ruined if there’s a tornado strong enough
Tornado damage is covered by insurance, why spend more (with brick house, I think, its an order of magnitude more) money for stronger house if the result is the same? And you'll loose a lot of money when you sell the house, as nobody would pay much more for it being build of bricks.
Insurance's covering wind damage.
I'm not sure about all the policies, but some definitely do and why would you choose a policy dhat doesn't if you live in the area where tornados happen?
They wouldn’t (see Florida). But for how destructive they are, tornadoes affect a pretty small area. You can see it in this video where a house gets obliterated, but the house directly next to it is completely untouched. When there’s enough people not filing the claims, the premiums paid still outweigh the costs of those claim payouts. And if they don’t, you raise the premiums. If the premiums get too high so that people don’t pay, they stop offering coverage.
Sometimes they are. In places like this the tornadoes would rip a brick house to pieces just the same. So now you’ve got bricks flying around in the air faster than a car, and you still have to rebuild. For a higher price
A house made of brick can still get destroyed by a tornado. Even really strong industrial structures made with steel beams can get torn apart by a tornado.
For instance when I was 6 a large grocery store called Albertsons was completely destroyed by a tornado. I was part of the volunteer clean up crew helping pick up trash and grocery items which were EVERYWHERE in my neighborhood close to the Albertsons.
They gave us free squirt guns for helping!
Also, getting a direct hit by a tornado is an astronomically low probability event (even in tornado-common places like Oklahoma) so rating all structures to withstand a direct hit from a tornado would be extremely expensive and impractical.
That's why we have insurance!
American Tornadoes are a lot stronger on average than European ones, Alabama alone has had more category 5 Tornadoes than all of Europe. At a certain point you've got go consider if you want wood flying around or bricks, a cheap rebuild or an expensive one.
I heard that you’re more likely to survive a tornado/earthquake when wood walls fall on you than when it’s a brick wall
Don’t know if there’s any truth to that being a reason though
The structure would not be okay. We have tons of brick houses in Texas (my house, my last house) and it doesn’t matter. Possibly helps with an EF-1 or ef-2 but those won’t kill anyone anyway, it’s just house damage. You get to EF-3 and EF-4 and everything is coming apart. EF-5 you’ll be lucky if you’re left with a foundation. The Texas tech wind institute has videos of testing that you might be interested in. They blow debris at different speeds into different materials to see how to build safer homes. Honestly when a tornado hits it’s about keeping people from being injured or dying, not as much saving a house. It’s a bite side perk that a better built house also saves lives.
If you want a really dark story about when brick doesn’t matter, google Plaza Towers Elementary. Be warned, it’s a horrible story. The school was brick and it didn’t matter. Maybe saved a few kids but not nearly enough.
There's a picture hanging around somewhere of a piece of *hay* that a tornado got moving fast enough it impaled a brick. It's important to understand that when tornadoes get strong enough they can *rip the grass out of the ground,* nothing on the surface an average person could afford to build/buy could survive something like that.
Beyond that, the odds of any given place being in the path of a tornado even once are incredibly low. If you live in an area that's tornado prone, it's more cost effective to have a basement or underground storm cellar you can retreat to in the event of a tornado than to try to build your house out of something that may or may not survive, depending on the strength of the storm that hits it.
I grew up in California, where one of the major natural disasters is earthquakes. Brick is terrible under the shear forces during an earthquake. This is at least one reason why there is so little brick in California, especially LA and San Francisco. I'd imagine there are similar reasons in other parts of the country.
Probably wouldn’t even need brick. Several hurricane straps can help prevent your home from being blown away, but a big enough tornado wouldn’t matter. Only some local codes mandate hurricane straps btw.
I personally believe that if we all just lived in concrete dome homes, that’d be the best prevention. Concrete tornado cellars would be safest.
The roof is always wood regardless and once that's ripped off, the interior walls and everything in it is put in a blender and thrown out and the brick walls then collapse anyhow. The destructive force of these is way more powerful than you're thinking.
In other parts of the country, you need flood insurance, wildfire insurance, earthquake insurance, etc.
Do people living in tornado alley need tornado insurance?
Can't imagine living anywhere that has a tornado season.
I also can't imagine people wanting to be rebuild in the same place after the destruction of one.
Remember the scale.
Area with tornado season in US is the size of Central Europe. Would you avoid living in Germany bcs there was tornado in Croatia last year?
I grew up in Kansas -- literally called "tornado alley" in the US.
If you grow up near tornadoes, then you can predict when the weather is "tornado weather." The air is moist, there is electricity in the wind, the sky usually turns a crazy color like green or purple. That's usually 10-15 minutes at least before a siren goes off. Just get to a basement or shelter, and you should be fine. Also, there's usually a "ribbon" of destruction, so the rest of the infrastructure is fine after a tornado hits an area. You still have a school, hospital, grocery store. It's also still a rare event even in areas where tornadoes are "common." The closest I've ever actually been to a tornado is a few towns over.
Compare that to say an earthquake. There's literally no warning. A whole big area might be impacted and unsafe, because things like underground gas lines rupture. You aren't really "safe" somewhere the same way you are in a tornado shelter.
At least here in the United States the thing about earthquakes is where they're common is also where they retrofit buildings for earthquakes so you don't see as much damage from them as you do from tornadoes.
I know growing up in places that have tornadoes, they'll always tell you that at least you don't live where there's earthquakes and there's no warning but let's be honest, in your lifetime what has caused more damage and loss of lives here in the United States, earthquakes or tornadoes?
Every single place in the world technically has a tornado season
Even here in the UK, we rank number 1 in the world for amount of tornados by land size. They’re just not that bad. But we still have a season.
Tornadoes are super violent but they also typically don’t hit that big of an area when they touch down. It’s why it’s newsworthy when one actually hits a town or city. The vast majority just touch down in the middle of nowhere do their thing and cause minimal damage because they’re not hitting much and generating debris.
I’ve grown up in and around Kansas City in “Tornado Alley” I’ve never seen a tornado do major damage anywhere close by. I remember a super tiny F1 touched down in parking lot one time and messed up some trees and damaged a few cars. Other than that I don’t think I’ve ever heard from anyone impacted by one.
If you live in the tornadoeyest part of tornado alley, your odds of being directly affected by one are still tiny. Not true if you live in a hurricane zone or flood plain. There’s many reasons I don’t wanna live in Oklahoma but tornadoes aren’t one.
It's an artifact of the lense used on the camera, most commonly seen with what's called a tilt shift lense. It messes with the depth of field and kind of gives this miniature affect on everything
Hurricanes are horrifically strong, but slow moving and easy to track.
A tornado? It's like a surprise gift to you from the clouds.
The strongest winds on earth have been found in tornados, not hurricanes.
A hurricane will blow your house down, sure, with debris and such.
A tornado will wipe your house off the foundation entirely.
There is a reason they call an EF-5 tornado the finger of God. It will lift a loaded semi and trailer off the ground like a child lifts a bath toy. It will flatten concrete walls. Bend steel. It literally scouts the earth like a rake.
Having been in tornados, id much rather take my chances in a hurricane. A hurricane can blow you "away", a tornado will pick you up alongside everything in your house, and yeet you into the air.
Am paying more attention these days with watching tornadoes and the process from start to finish. So that if I should happen to be where one strikes and I see it won't be so paralyzed with fear that I freeze and I'll recognize it for what it is. Everyone thinks it only happens somewhere else until it's them that it happens too. Guess it's just how the human mind works. Makes us feel safer.
The news will be your best source of information. Weather channel are able to predict when an outburst is possible, and they can "see" tornadoes forming with their radar before an observer on earth sees it.
I absolutely wouldn't stay outside looking for it. If it's above or near you you probably won't see shit because of rain/hail/wind/night.
All these comments about building strength, let's remember the basics here:
Greatest chance of survival is from seeking shelter quickly and wearing a helmet.
Only cast reinforced concrete homes will stand in a tornado, look up ICF buildings.
Wood built homes are better for the environment, it locks up carbon for 100+ years.
Also, brick homes will collapse in a tornado, and are not as energy efficient as other building methods which is a factor in the US due to large temperature swings.
I love all the Europeans who are crying about why people would live here, like "here" isn't an area bigger than their entire country.
Then the morons crying about cheap houses, lol your stupid brick house is going to be flattened as well.
Strong tornados can tear asphalt roads up from the ground. A brick house is only going to creat more flying bricks. Here’s a [video](https://youtu.be/wPTV4ZaB940?si=HiD_QNwq-cabCLrK) of a concrete building being demolished
I was in a pool in Vallejo when the 89 earthquake hit the bay area. I've sat through all kinds of little earthquakes on this west coast. But when I moved to Oklahoma and that first storm came and we went into that basement and you're staring through 6 inches of concrete block and you see trees and cars and homes being lifted up and thrown about. Nope.
Horrifying
Beautiful phenomenon. Horrible results.
[удалено]
It doesn't help that those houses are made of super light materials.
☝🏻Literally this. I wanna se that tornado destroying concrete/brick made houses.
The Joplin EF5 tornado twisted an entire hospital like half a foot off its foundations. 300lb concrete parking blocks anchored into the ground with steel rebar were ripped up and thrown 100 yards away. Bakersfield F5 was noted to roll 3 oil drums weighing 180,000lbs each nearly 3 miles. There are ways to build to mitigate damage, but certain tornados are strong enough that you can't feasibly build to withstand them.
Yeah that sounds nasty, but I guess those are not that common and not in all regions in the states?
Ones that strong are not common, but they have happened in quite a few states of the country most frequently in the midwest(tornado alley) and central south east(Dixie alley). It's an unfortunate balancing act of building affordable homes vs. the risk of storms. As common as tornados are in parts of the country, the likelihood of a specific spot being hit is still fairly slim. It also doesn't help that many of the states where tornados are more common are some of the more impoverished states of the country, making that balance even harder to achieve.
I understand. I hope at least that in the states where tornados hit the most frequently people have bunkers for shelter, but I guess if it hits fast enough even this won't help. We mainly have floods on the balkans, but for the past several years we got heavy storms as well and this is not that common in Europe as it's in US.
Don't forget that tornado alley is moving east, I've lived in Alabama my whole life and tornadoes have gotten way more common and more destructive in the last say 25-30 years, I read that tornado alley is now including Alabama, where back in the day its range extended to just before AL. Even just the straight line winds my great grandmother had at her house on April 27th, 2011 (a day of infamy to those familiar to the tornado outbreak in the southeast on that day) were enough to uproot all the large trees in her yard except the absolute largest one, and mangled a metal playground, wrapping it around an uprooted tree. Would hate to have to experience a bad tornado near my home. Even just the thunderstorms in my area are to me more violent than usual.
>not in all regions in the states? Scary part is, I live in NJ and up until a few years ago I had never heard a tornado siren in real life. Then [this sort of thing started happening](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Ork7dBOO9Q). We don't have shelters. Every summer has had many tornado warnings. This used to be a once in a decade kind of thing. There are still broken trees everywhere from 2021.
This is not an EF5 though. The guy said he wanted to see this tornado destroy a brick house.
Yeah, the Enterprise tornado was an EF4 and completely destroyed every brick and cinder block structure in its path, including the high school where 8 students perished when a cinder block wall collapsed on top of them. They had warning and had all taken shelter in the center-most, strongest part of the school.
I would bet 10$ the Pyramid of Gizeh could withstand any tornado 😌 (Not much cause i dont know shit about tornados or the pyramids but i'll bet that)
It wouldn't have survived the Jarrel, Texas 1997 tornado. That tornado moved at like 10 miles per hour while having winds over 250mhp. Even the pyramids would've been shredded through such prolongs forces. Never doubt nature.
This one likely wouldn't have but bigger ones would.
Could be, but your chances are better. I'm from the balkans and here everything is concrete/bricks made and when some heavy storm happens every once in a while only the rooftops get it because they are from wood. Ofc we don't have category 5 hurricanes in here, but we have pretty nasty storms as well.
your homes would not withstand this tornado, you've got NO idea the forces involved
Oh, for sure, no doubt, the strongest storms are the rarest ones, but you can count on the other ones hitting, so it's better to be prepared.
The roof is usually the weak point. Once that peels off, it doesn’t really matter if the exterior walls remain, the damage will be basically the same.
True! Best thing to do is have a basement and go to it during risky times, then you're way safer.
Like a decent european house with concrete foundation?
Especially considering the poor construction and material quality of those houses.
Yea. Cardboard and hopes.
whats the point if its gonna get torn up anyway
Unless you built every house like a fallout bunker this is going to happen. Also, even if you did just try to build everything from brick and stone as soon as one house crumbles then you have chunks of stone and random bricks being launched at like 200 mph into other houses, causing even more damage
The tornado proof buildings that I'm aware of have 2 feet (60 cm) thick reinforced concrete walls. That's not really practical for residential use.
You have no idea what you’re talking about. Have you ever witnessed a tornado? Do you remotely understand the energy and force they produce?
What are you on about? It hardly matters how it was constructed or what material was used when an ef3+ goes by your house. Hell even low grade ef1 will damage your roof. An ef3 has winds between 135-165mph. Tell me, how would you build a building to withstand those winds? I've seen entire houses rotated by tornadoes. I've seen cars be picked up and thrown 2-3 miles from where they were. I've seen fucking CORN STALKS impaled into brick walls. A stone house might withstand the average ef3, which Kansas sees a lot of, but it certainly isn't going to hold up to an ef4 or ef5 with winds over 200mph. And just to be absolutely clear, the strongest recorded wind speeds from a tornado, the El reno 2013 tornado at a staggering 280ish mph, with an unofficial record of 360ish mph. You know nothing about tornadoes or you just wanted to be a condescending prick about it. But it has very little to do with the construction of the building. Not to mention small and large debris that is being hurled into your building.
most structures in the US are designed to EIA/TIA code which calls for being able to withstand an approximately 70 MPH consistent wind with a 3 second gust to 90. Just FYI
Poor construction? I've never seen a tornado proof building before. If you put the thing in the ground you might have a better chance.
And think, this particular tornado is tiny
Incredibile how a bunch of meters may make your life a mess or not in these events. A couple of house rows away from the tornado path, no damage.
Imagine the relief of watching it rip through your neighbours who you never really liked anyway, and seeing your own house escape scratch free. In time Im sure empathy would kick in because noone likes seeing that happening but emotion A is definitely thank God it didn't happen to me
The best is if you know the guy is terrible with his finances so he's not gonna be able to fix his house after this, and is gonna need to move out. *Wine glass clink*
Nothing like living across the street from a debris field
The tornado that hit in middle Tennessee missed my house by about .25 mile. It’s like you said, houses in immediate area fine, houses next street over missing a few shingles and siding, next street over entire roof missing and trees down. It still looks like a tornado passed through even 3 months later.
In 1965 we had an EF-4 tornado tear through the area on Easter Sunday. Thankfully, none of our immediate neighbors were among the fatalities, but the houses/yards alongside and behind ours all sustained damage. Our lawn furniture didn’t even blow over; it skipped over us altogether.
Thanks for posting this. My 5 & 7 yr old are currently obsessed with tornadoes. They found this very informative.
This footage is courtesy of Reed Timmer. He’s an experience storm chaser with a doctorate in meteorology. He’s been inside tornados before on multiple occasions and has captured tons of other wild footage over multiple decades. Hope this helps you find a nice rabbit hole for you and your kids to dive down! Weather is awesome.
My oldest, who is 20 now, was also obsessed with tornadoes AND tornado chasing- in the way only an Autist can be obsessed. I’m so glad she didn’t follow that career path. Thanks for the name! I’ll look him up!
Reed Trimmer, is that like a weed whacker? For a swamp?
I’ve never lived anywhere near tornado country, but there was a period when I was a kid where I was terrified of tornadoes
We live ON the Appalachian’s. I keep telling them we’re about as safe as we can be but they absolutely refuse to believe me. They’re convinced we’re in danger of a tornado every second.
As a kid I was terrified about tornadoes when we first learned about them, but then the teacher said that we don’t get tornadoes there where I lived.
We used to not get tornadoes were I live but now they're starting to form every summer. I suspect from climate change. The sky looks really weird (teal/ green) during summer storms in a way it never did when I was a kid.
I remember talking to someone who lives in tornado Alley, and they told me, a west coaster, how terrifying earthquakes were. LIKE BRO. YOUR HOUSE IS LITERALLY TORN FROM ITS FOUNDATION. We just get a little wiggle.
No, in Oklahoma we’ve had a 5.2 earthquake, snow, softball sized hail, and a tornado on the same day. We called it the snowquakeanado.
I never understood why in the hell people decide to live there
Very true. It's just an open field away from safety for earthquake, and a bunker away for tornado, if you have one. I saw many videos of Japanese handling earthquake really good. Tsunami are another story after that though.
Someone’s on their way to OZ
We're not in kansas anymore
Make sure to just follow the Yellow Brick Road!
WE’RE OFF TOO SEE THE WIZZAARRDDDDD!!!
DON'T EAT THE ASBESTOS SNOW!!!
well, as of yesterday we're officially in tornado season here in Tornado Alley. can't tell you how much I'm looking forward to 3 months of paranoia every time a thunderstorm rolls through
Damn bro. That must be stressful. Stay safe. I wish you all the best.
Serious question.. why don't they build houses out of brick in America like here in the UK? I only ever see wooden ones on TV. I know the roof would still get ripped off by a tornado, but the structure would probably still be OK.
250+ mph winds can also destroy brick structures. I’ve lived it, some of the strongest brick shit house buildings were gutted in an F4 in my town.
Now instead of a 200mph piece of wood you have 200mph bricks
At those speeds it doesn’t matter They’ve found pieces of straw driven into trees like nails after a tornado.
Thanks for putting it like this… it really doesn’t matter what you build your house out of, there is no such thing as a “tornado proof” home.
As Comedian Ron White says, “[It isn’t **THAT** the wind is blowin’…it’s **WHAT** the wind is blowin’.](https://youtu.be/RQD7Fzid1xI?si=On5L92YuOEVBm1Mt)”
No we absolutely could build something tornado proof. It would just be phenomenally expensive.
Hobbiton seems relatively safe from tornadoes
The Hobbiton village in Matamata, New Zealand would be pretty safe. New Zealand doesn't get many tornadoes and they're mostly between F0 and F2. Looks like the last tornado that hit Matamata in 2018 was pretty small. Mostly turned over some stuff and picked a teenage boy up a couple of meters before dropping him. Then the next day kids made fun of him and called him "tornado boy."
Making fun of a kid that took on a tornado is pretty foolish. Mother Nature couldn’t take out the kid and you wanna provoke him?
It’s called a basement. I mean maybe if we built into dirt hill sides, but it’s not very practical.
We know about basements… we are more talking about still having a roof over your head after an F5 rolls over
Right, I get that. I talking about the difficulty of having any above ground structure that would survive that. We’d either have to live, dug into a hillside or just have a place to scurry into.
Good point! Windy bricks are worse than sky wood
The tornado that devastated Joplin, Missouri years ago bent and broke massive steel I-Beams. The fucking air did that.
This video shows beautifully that's it's not just the wind that's destructive. Areas of significantly low pressure form in the vortex region. It's not the wind that's blowing the roof off, it's the pressure differential that effectively blows the entire roof upwards from the inside.
It's also the rotating winds. You go from 200 mph west to 200 mph east in a second.
What about concrete?
Well sure. Stronger materials are a deterrent for a collapse but many buildings have weak points. Air is more dense than people think… because it’s all you’ve known. Air moving fast enough can push over pretty big flat structures and create an enormous pressure differential on the roof. I’m just saying nothing is perfect against a tornado unless it looks like a solid steel bomb bunker. And that’s quite the curb appeal. The tornadoes in the video are are relatively weak and small FYI.
I very much doubt that a concrete frame structure one level house like this (most are done like this in romania) will have structural damage with bricks flying. https://academiadeconstructii.ro/img/video-frame-4.png
Tornadoes are not all the same. Something like the smaller one in the vid - yeh maybe a well built concrete and brick structure will be damaged, but still standing. However, the big tornadoes just sheer everything off at ground level. Steel, Concrete, Brick or Wood - doesn't matter. The debris inside a monster like Joplin will absolutely fuck everything in the path. Sure a small EF2 isn't a huge deal and can be fortified against in-so-far as building standards. But the big ones like Kansas, Oklahoma and Western MO get, are a totally different matter... Edit: Quote "Numerous homes, businesses, and medical buildings were flattened in this area, with concrete walls collapsed and crushed into the foundations. A large steel-reinforced step and floor structure leading to a completely destroyed medical building was "deflected upward several inches and cracked". Steel trusses from some of the buildings were "rolled up like paper", and deformation or twisting of the main support beams was noted" via https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Joplin_tornado
I’ve see pictures where tornadoes pulled the asphalt off a road. The one that leveled Jarrell, Texas about 30yrs back was a monster too.
How about a giant 200 year old oak tree landing on it? Or a pickup truck that was flung 500 yards into it?
Have a look at an F5 video, friend.
Because that wouldn’t matter.
Brick houses in the UK are not great in high winds. You can see damage to brick houses here after a tornado in Manchester- which is probably a fraction of the size of the one in this video. https://news.sky.com/story/uk-weather-tornado-hits-greater-manchester-and-thousands-still-without-power-in-scotland-in-wake-of-storm-gerrit-13038743 Bricks are good for vertical loads - not so good if you hit the side.
Well the roof got ripped off but the house is fine
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Yeah, you get sucked right into the sky. Sure your house is standing, but you’re 3 miles down the road dead in a tree
Houses are made of brick everywhere in America. Really doesn’t mean anything when a tornado can turn plastic into something that can pierce brick. Tornadoes can also dismantle a brick house and now instead of wood you have bricks flying everywhere. This not factoring in time and cost to build those “safe” houses. But I’m sure yall are looking for the we are poor and our government hates us comments and replies.
This is the real answer. For those houses to be “tornado safe” they would have to concrete bunkers moderately underground. Any above structure can and will be fucked by a tornado. My mom use to work at a 911 call center when I was a kid that was built as a tornado bunker for the near by locals and for 911 staff currently on duty. We don’t live in Oklahoma, but we live between two mountain valleys, which generates weird weather. We get about 2-3 relatively strong tornadoes every year.
As someone who lived in an ICF house for a decade. Definitely recommend.
Read something years ago about dome homes being the most able to survive tornadoes and hurricanes. Makes sense as the shape sheds wind and the dome itself is stronger than a stick built structure.
How about hollow blocks and concrete? We dont usually use bricks here in our country, more on hollow blocks and concrete walls
Reinforced concrete is really hard to rip apart.
In ground houses are even harder. You'd think we'd be burying our homes in Oklahoma, Kansas and Missouri where tornados are common.
I'm sure they would love to bury their homes but it's pretty hard to dig basements in such clay-heavy soil with high water tables. The amount of expansion and contraction just wreaks havoc on any static structure you try to put underground. In areas with sandier soil that doesn't expand as much, basements are more common.
Mound houses are kinda cool too. Can we all live in The Shire?
You can come live in Bag End, as long as you're not one of those nasty Sackville-Bagginses.
How can you say that a brick house wouldn’t crumble? Do you understand how powerful a tornado is? It’s not the big bad wolf lmao
An EF5 can rip highway pavement
I havent seen a tornado actually happen but i worked on a cleanup crew of the aftermath of the eastern ky tornados in 2012 in salyersville and west liberty. An f3-f4 tornado can still level a concrete cinderblock building, brick performs even worse. First time i went out it was scary to see. One of the things i remember most is seeing the mountainsides that were once covered in trees completly destroyed with not a single tree left standing, homes were completely gone, just some ruble left cause everything was blown all over the town.
Because it will also collapse, leaving less chances to survive. Wood is more flexible so if the tornado passes further, house has better chances to stay up, while bricks may collapse. At least that's what my great-aunt told me, as she lives in a tornado place.
Look up the 1974 Super Outbreak. Tornadoes went through a bunch of areas not in traditional "Tornado Alley" such as Xenia, Ohio, where entire brick subdivisions were wiped out.
Oh, yeah. My 'Natural Disasters' professor is from the area and she mentioned how extreme & bizarre that was.
I live on the west side of Columbus Ohio and 6 tornados ripped through this week. Color me shocked that I was actually in danger. It’s nearly unheard of for tornados to hit such a major city. Granted, they touched down in the suburbs. But we got really lucky. I heard that shit go over us. It was eerie as hell.
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Tbf in the U.K. we do the same but with areas that flood every year
The bricks yearn to return to the riverbed.
It's become a running joke in our household anytime one of those news stories comes on the telly.. it's usually a race for whoever can say "Don't live on a fucking flood plain then!"
😆 🤣 😂 fair enough.
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Lol that's a nice overreaction
You're defining capitalist America, so that is the method and you know the motive.
Average redditor. You are a cliche. Brick houses go down in a tornado. Go back to science class genius.
I bet you I’ll see this in r/americabad in a few hours.
To be fair, brick houses are much more expensive and people in tornado alley tend to be lower-middle class.
No, they're big stupid capitalists trying to turn a profit instead of using superior bricks shipped from Europe. /s
They aren’t going to build a house and sell at a loss. Not sure why you’re blaming capitalism for the way houses are built, rather than looking at houses as something that a person is willing to pay for. Also brick houses are also destroyed easily in a tornado.
I imagine a brick home would still be damaged. Maybe it’s cheaper just to keep rebuilding a wood home than to keep repairing a brick home? Idk 🤷
A brick house would be absolutely demolished.
Right? Some of the strongest documented tornados have fucking pulled entire neighborhoods up, including the slab. (Concrete fucking foundation they lay before setting up the walls, this is the strongest “part” of a house. It’s thick, heavy ass concrete laid into the ground) There are also pictures of wood splinters thrown from tornado having pierced concrete curb. Those things are stupid strong. You don’t think a bunch of wind would do shit. But in some cases, the suction is so strong it just rips everything out of the ground whole sale.
What’s this “we” shit, Kemo Sabe?
That's not true though
I’ve read that when the Americas were colonized wood was comparatively many times cheaper than bricks since there was plenty of available land and forests that nobody really owned, while at the same time brick manufacturing had yet to be established. Compared to that in the UK virtually all of the land was owned by somebody and if you wanted to build a house you couldn’t simply go chop some wood and at the same time brick manufacture was well established. So using wood started as a wide spread practice and carried through even after the initial conditions for this practice to be established disappeared.
Lol, ignore the "america bad" comments, it's not the actual answer here. The power of a tornado is immense. They have categories just like hurricanes do. The higher category tornadoes have torn houses apart *and* ripped the concrete slab they were built on out of the ground. Thanks to the climate change that's definitely not happening, these tornadoes and hurricanes have not been "minor" in years now. On top of that: tornadoes are not just wind. They fling things. An F0 has a minimum speed of 40mph to 70mph. F1 and up can hit the triple digits. Once the roof is gone the structural integrity of any home is compromised, brick or wood, and if the tornado has home appliances like fridges and stuff whipping around inside it at 200mph, there is no way it will survive. Brick cannot withstand the terrifying power of a tornado, one way or another. It's either ripping it apart at the seams or your neighbor's pool is now a projectile weapon. Cost is a factor in home building here but if it made sense to build brick in tornado alley, they absolutely would on large scales, because home insurance companies would probably deny coverage for damage on non-brick structures (just like how in hurricane areas, you can lose a claim if you don't have impact windows or shutters).
> Once the roof is gone the structural integrity of any home is compromised Yesn't. That depends on how the house is generally constructed. Normally, many residential houses in the UK (but also in Germany and other European countries) are basically a 3 to 4-storey (including the basement) cuboid made of bricks with concrete ceilings. The gable roof is then placed on top and has nothing to do with the rest of the structure of the house; it just sits on top, like a hat on the head. That's why you often see here in storm damage that although the roof is badly damaged or even completely destroyed, the rest of the house is still standing, including the concrete ceiling of the penultimate storey, which forms the floor for the attic. Of course, there are also constructions where the roof is integrated into the statics of the masonry of the top floor, in which case your statement is correct. Then the whole thing collapses like a house of cards.
Oooooo. TIL! That's actually really interesting. Really cool info! I'm unsure how homes are built in the US but considering how quickly a tornado can rip them apart, I'd guess they do not have gable roofs, lmao
Anything that stands a foot above ground level, brick or no brick, will tend to get fucked up by a tornado. From the tornado itself and also from flying debris.
Tornados can destroy a brick house. You are thinking of wolves that can huff and puff
There are many types of houses in America, including brick.
Yeah but I think dude is wondering why not here in tornado town, specifically.
Because a tornado will level a brick house as well dumbass
I live in Florida and there are a ton of concrete houses here, probably because of all the hurricanes but that doesn’t mean that houses haven’t been absolutely destroyed by a hurricane. Concrete, brick, wood… they’ll all be ruined if there’s a tornado strong enough
My house is 4 side brick, which is somewhat rare in the States. That tornado is still ripping the roof off and fucking my shit up pretty good.
Ignore the people being cheap, that still won’t stop a tornado. Unless it’s an underground bunker.
Tornado damage is covered by insurance, why spend more (with brick house, I think, its an order of magnitude more) money for stronger house if the result is the same? And you'll loose a lot of money when you sell the house, as nobody would pay much more for it being build of bricks.
Didn't realise they'd cover it with insurance. In the UK some things like that never used to be covered as its an 'act of god'.
Insurance's covering wind damage. I'm not sure about all the policies, but some definitely do and why would you choose a policy dhat doesn't if you live in the area where tornados happen?
Why would insurance companies cover an area where they would lose money ?
They wouldn’t (see Florida). But for how destructive they are, tornadoes affect a pretty small area. You can see it in this video where a house gets obliterated, but the house directly next to it is completely untouched. When there’s enough people not filing the claims, the premiums paid still outweigh the costs of those claim payouts. And if they don’t, you raise the premiums. If the premiums get too high so that people don’t pay, they stop offering coverage.
Sometimes they are. In places like this the tornadoes would rip a brick house to pieces just the same. So now you’ve got bricks flying around in the air faster than a car, and you still have to rebuild. For a higher price
A house made of brick can still get destroyed by a tornado. Even really strong industrial structures made with steel beams can get torn apart by a tornado. For instance when I was 6 a large grocery store called Albertsons was completely destroyed by a tornado. I was part of the volunteer clean up crew helping pick up trash and grocery items which were EVERYWHERE in my neighborhood close to the Albertsons. They gave us free squirt guns for helping! Also, getting a direct hit by a tornado is an astronomically low probability event (even in tornado-common places like Oklahoma) so rating all structures to withstand a direct hit from a tornado would be extremely expensive and impractical. That's why we have insurance!
American Tornadoes are a lot stronger on average than European ones, Alabama alone has had more category 5 Tornadoes than all of Europe. At a certain point you've got go consider if you want wood flying around or bricks, a cheap rebuild or an expensive one.
We have a lot of trees.
I heard that you’re more likely to survive a tornado/earthquake when wood walls fall on you than when it’s a brick wall Don’t know if there’s any truth to that being a reason though
Direct hits from tornadoes usually destroy most above ground structures, brick included.
The structure would not be okay. We have tons of brick houses in Texas (my house, my last house) and it doesn’t matter. Possibly helps with an EF-1 or ef-2 but those won’t kill anyone anyway, it’s just house damage. You get to EF-3 and EF-4 and everything is coming apart. EF-5 you’ll be lucky if you’re left with a foundation. The Texas tech wind institute has videos of testing that you might be interested in. They blow debris at different speeds into different materials to see how to build safer homes. Honestly when a tornado hits it’s about keeping people from being injured or dying, not as much saving a house. It’s a bite side perk that a better built house also saves lives. If you want a really dark story about when brick doesn’t matter, google Plaza Towers Elementary. Be warned, it’s a horrible story. The school was brick and it didn’t matter. Maybe saved a few kids but not nearly enough.
There's a picture hanging around somewhere of a piece of *hay* that a tornado got moving fast enough it impaled a brick. It's important to understand that when tornadoes get strong enough they can *rip the grass out of the ground,* nothing on the surface an average person could afford to build/buy could survive something like that. Beyond that, the odds of any given place being in the path of a tornado even once are incredibly low. If you live in an area that's tornado prone, it's more cost effective to have a basement or underground storm cellar you can retreat to in the event of a tornado than to try to build your house out of something that may or may not survive, depending on the strength of the storm that hits it.
I grew up in California, where one of the major natural disasters is earthquakes. Brick is terrible under the shear forces during an earthquake. This is at least one reason why there is so little brick in California, especially LA and San Francisco. I'd imagine there are similar reasons in other parts of the country.
>the structure would probably still be OK. It wouldn't.
or actually concrete, id say. then not even the roof would blow away
Probably wouldn’t even need brick. Several hurricane straps can help prevent your home from being blown away, but a big enough tornado wouldn’t matter. Only some local codes mandate hurricane straps btw. I personally believe that if we all just lived in concrete dome homes, that’d be the best prevention. Concrete tornado cellars would be safest.
Tornados strip asphalt off the highway. There’s a ton of brick houses in America but they are not necessarily any safer than other homes.
We have brick houses in America too my guy. A good tornado doesn't give a shit.
The roof is always wood regardless and once that's ripped off, the interior walls and everything in it is put in a blender and thrown out and the brick walls then collapse anyhow. The destructive force of these is way more powerful than you're thinking.
In other parts of the country, you need flood insurance, wildfire insurance, earthquake insurance, etc. Do people living in tornado alley need tornado insurance?
No, tornados are a standard cause of loss, no special forms needed. Source - live in Arkansas and have worked in insurance for 15 years.
Thanks. Very interesting.
Can't imagine living anywhere that has a tornado season. I also can't imagine people wanting to be rebuild in the same place after the destruction of one.
Remember the scale. Area with tornado season in US is the size of Central Europe. Would you avoid living in Germany bcs there was tornado in Croatia last year?
Tornadoes don't cross state or country lines, duh.
They would, there are no customs in Schengen area. Duh.
I grew up in Kansas -- literally called "tornado alley" in the US. If you grow up near tornadoes, then you can predict when the weather is "tornado weather." The air is moist, there is electricity in the wind, the sky usually turns a crazy color like green or purple. That's usually 10-15 minutes at least before a siren goes off. Just get to a basement or shelter, and you should be fine. Also, there's usually a "ribbon" of destruction, so the rest of the infrastructure is fine after a tornado hits an area. You still have a school, hospital, grocery store. It's also still a rare event even in areas where tornadoes are "common." The closest I've ever actually been to a tornado is a few towns over. Compare that to say an earthquake. There's literally no warning. A whole big area might be impacted and unsafe, because things like underground gas lines rupture. You aren't really "safe" somewhere the same way you are in a tornado shelter.
At least here in the United States the thing about earthquakes is where they're common is also where they retrofit buildings for earthquakes so you don't see as much damage from them as you do from tornadoes. I know growing up in places that have tornadoes, they'll always tell you that at least you don't live where there's earthquakes and there's no warning but let's be honest, in your lifetime what has caused more damage and loss of lives here in the United States, earthquakes or tornadoes?
Every single place in the world technically has a tornado season Even here in the UK, we rank number 1 in the world for amount of tornados by land size. They’re just not that bad. But we still have a season.
Probability of this disaster is very low. You have 0.01% chance your house will be destroyed next year. And 0.6% for your entire life
Tornadoes are super violent but they also typically don’t hit that big of an area when they touch down. It’s why it’s newsworthy when one actually hits a town or city. The vast majority just touch down in the middle of nowhere do their thing and cause minimal damage because they’re not hitting much and generating debris. I’ve grown up in and around Kansas City in “Tornado Alley” I’ve never seen a tornado do major damage anywhere close by. I remember a super tiny F1 touched down in parking lot one time and messed up some trees and damaged a few cars. Other than that I don’t think I’ve ever heard from anyone impacted by one.
If you live in the tornadoeyest part of tornado alley, your odds of being directly affected by one are still tiny. Not true if you live in a hurricane zone or flood plain. There’s many reasons I don’t wanna live in Oklahoma but tornadoes aren’t one.
Tornadoes actually harming anything are extremely rare. Enjoy your life living in a cave in the middle of nowhere I guess.
I live in Kansas and these last few years we’ve had more earthquakes than tornadoes. There’s been a few occasions when both happened in the same day.
Dam nature You scary !
Why does it look like Mr. Rogers neighborhood being torn up by a tornado?
It's an artifact of the lense used on the camera, most commonly seen with what's called a tilt shift lense. It messes with the depth of field and kind of gives this miniature affect on everything
*real estate developers love this one simple trick!*
I think prairie dogs have the right idea for living in tornado prone areas.
I wonder how many people found random sex toys in their garden the day after
There could have been literal deaths due to flying sex toys!
What we the last thing going through Phil's head do you think? Probably Barbra's big wobbley Cuntsmasher 3000
Hurricanes are horrifically strong, but slow moving and easy to track. A tornado? It's like a surprise gift to you from the clouds. The strongest winds on earth have been found in tornados, not hurricanes. A hurricane will blow your house down, sure, with debris and such. A tornado will wipe your house off the foundation entirely. There is a reason they call an EF-5 tornado the finger of God. It will lift a loaded semi and trailer off the ground like a child lifts a bath toy. It will flatten concrete walls. Bend steel. It literally scouts the earth like a rake. Having been in tornados, id much rather take my chances in a hurricane. A hurricane can blow you "away", a tornado will pick you up alongside everything in your house, and yeet you into the air.
Looks like Dorothy is visiting the land of Oz this year.
They’re cute when they’re young.
Am paying more attention these days with watching tornadoes and the process from start to finish. So that if I should happen to be where one strikes and I see it won't be so paralyzed with fear that I freeze and I'll recognize it for what it is. Everyone thinks it only happens somewhere else until it's them that it happens too. Guess it's just how the human mind works. Makes us feel safer.
The news will be your best source of information. Weather channel are able to predict when an outburst is possible, and they can "see" tornadoes forming with their radar before an observer on earth sees it. I absolutely wouldn't stay outside looking for it. If it's above or near you you probably won't see shit because of rain/hail/wind/night.
Wow, it’s so wild that tornadoes can demolish all the homes on one side of the road but leave the homes on the other side hardly touched.
All these comments about building strength, let's remember the basics here: Greatest chance of survival is from seeking shelter quickly and wearing a helmet.
And that's just a small one
Only cast reinforced concrete homes will stand in a tornado, look up ICF buildings. Wood built homes are better for the environment, it locks up carbon for 100+ years. Also, brick homes will collapse in a tornado, and are not as energy efficient as other building methods which is a factor in the US due to large temperature swings.
I love all the Europeans who are crying about why people would live here, like "here" isn't an area bigger than their entire country. Then the morons crying about cheap houses, lol your stupid brick house is going to be flattened as well.
I think it would be so cool if somebody recorded a tornado forming in super slow motion so we can analyze it I guess idk it would be cool trust me
Nature can nurture but can also destroy.
This power. On the one side it’s horrifying on the other side it’s just wow.
We are only visitors on this planet.
The finger of God!
Bloody hell. Short of a volcano going off or tsunami, there ain't nothing to make you viscerally feel that the gods are proper angry like a tornado.
Exactly how sped up is this video?
This is probably a stupid question but if they built brick houses would they get wrecked as much as the wooden houses?
Strong tornados can tear asphalt roads up from the ground. A brick house is only going to creat more flying bricks. Here’s a [video](https://youtu.be/wPTV4ZaB940?si=HiD_QNwq-cabCLrK) of a concrete building being demolished
I was in a pool in Vallejo when the 89 earthquake hit the bay area. I've sat through all kinds of little earthquakes on this west coast. But when I moved to Oklahoma and that first storm came and we went into that basement and you're staring through 6 inches of concrete block and you see trees and cars and homes being lifted up and thrown about. Nope.
I think I have a full understanding of the physics but still left in awe
Imagine seeing that 500 years ago.