The General Chat Thread (2024)?
- Thread starter SatNavSaysStraightOn
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Just heard from my brother, they’re ok. His cabin made it through virtually unscathed, while his neighbor, and there’s maybe four lawnmower widths between them, his house was obliterated, not a stick left standing. That’s the randomness of tornadoes for you.
SandwichShortOfAPicnic
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Thats crazy!
JAS_OH1
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Sorry about his neighbor's house, but glad your brother is okay. Guessing the neighbor wasn't home?
Lullabelle
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JAS_OH1
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I"ve always liked sunshowers, you know where it's raining and sunny at the same time? Especially in spring when you can smell the wet earth. Something appealing about that.
I’m not sure yet, a lot of the residents there don’t live there year-round or through the week, so they may have been gone. I’ll find out more later.
Pics on the news sites are alarming:
Those are all from the Dayton Daily News.
Life in the Midwest.
JAS_OH1
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Up in the NE corner of OH where I live we don't get a lot of tornadoes (knock on wood). I remember Xenia got hit pretty bad several decades ago? Isn't Xenia down there in the SW corner of OH near Dayton?
I did a quick Google search and a few F0, F1, and F2s have hit further north near the lake where the land is flatter. Akron is quite hilly. The further east you go from here the hillier it gets, as we are only about 1 hour west of PA and the Allegheny mountains aren't very far from the state line. I seems that tornadoes target flatter land areas in general.
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SandwichShortOfAPicnic
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What happens now then TastyReuben?
Is there insurance money to fix things?
How often do these happen?
Xenia is exactly 12 miles north of my house. We go there all the time.
Xenia was indeed devastated by a tornado in 1974. I was 8 or 9 at the time, and we lived about an hour SW of there, and I remember sheltering from that, because it was part of a larger outbreak that terrorized a lot of the Midwest. Something like 150 distinct tornadoes touched down in a 24-hour period all across the Midwest.
The one that hit Xenia was the worst of them, though, and killed over 30 people. I don’t know if it’s still true, but it was considered the most destructive tornado in recorded history at that time. It was an F5, and I remember that storm very, very well.
People have private insurance, so now starts the long process of filing claims and going back and forth with adjusters, I suppose. I think there are usually some government assistance funds that people can apply for as well, but I don’t know for sure.
As to how often, it just depends on the weather. If I had to guess, we’ve lived in our current house almost 20 years, and we’ve averaged maybe a tornado a year that’s come close enough to see/hear, but those are mostly F0 and F1 tornadoes - they might blow some shingles off the roof or tip your doghouse over. We’ve lost siding on the house twice.
We’ve had maybe two bigger ones come through, ones that make you grab the wife, the dog, and your banjo and head to the innermost room/basement/crawlspace of your house and wait it out. The last one of those was probably six or seven years ago, and it shook the house enough to knock some things over. We don’t have a basement, and I’m more scared of spiders than I am tornadoes, so I refused to go into the crawlspace, so we rode it out in an interior closet, underneath a mattress.
Used to be, tornado season was mid-June to early-September, but the way things are now, it’s become nearly year-round. We had our first tornado alert last month, which was unheard of just a few years ago, and we’ve had them recently as late as November.
SandwichShortOfAPicnic
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I suppose you just get used to it? But it sounds terrifying.
Could you explain what exactly a crawl space is?
A crawlspace is the area between the ground and the underside of the floor of your house.
Some houses are on a full basement, some are just built on a concrete slab, and a crawlspace is between that. They’re usually three or four feet in height, with the floor supported on posts, hence the name “crawlspace,” because you can crawl under there, but you can’t stand up.
They’re normally there for ductwork, wiring, pipes, that sort of thing. My is actually on the higher side in that it’s close to five feet…but I still ain’t getting in there!
This might answer it:
That’s meant to be a joke, but there is exactly zero exaggeration in that. I can watch in my neighborhood…as soon as the sirens go off and the TV meteorologist says, “If you’re in the Sligo/Oakland/Gurneyville area, TAKE SHELTER NOW!” I can look outside and watch just about every front door open and a couple of people pop outside to see if they can spot it and get a pic.
SandwichShortOfAPicnic
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What difference does crawling under your house make if you got hit by a tornado?