We often complain about the weather in this country but our fiercest storms are now’t but a bit windy compared to the damage and destruction this tornado has wreaked across Oklahoma, entire neighbourhoods/housing schemes have been flattened and the death toll is rising fast according to the latest BBC update, an estimated two miles wide at the base with recorded wind speeds of 200mph+ 😯 . Two schools have taken a direct hit and many kids are still missing, horrible!.

BBC Oklahoma tornado

Its a serious business it all over the news here, sadly it does not look too good for the poor kids? I build (water) facilities in a hurricane zone and they like all all schools and other important buildings are designed and put together very well, very strong, heavy and full of redundancy. Looking at the news and seeing how the school was just torn apart is terrifying. My middle son is in elementary school and he has monthly hurricance/tornado drills on where to go and what to do if the alarm goes, they come so quick there is only time to get to the nearest safe place there is no way to get all the kids out in the time away from the area.
Not good, its so sad..

Yeah been on since I got up on the news here in Oz. They reckon it was about 2km wide and winds up to 320km/h. Jebus.

The photos of this on the BBC website are frightening…

OMG!

Phenomenal stuff here’s hoping the casualties are low or ideally zero.

At least 91 feared dead so far, incl 20 kids.

I can’t help but wonder if there was sufficient warning and enough shelters? Apparently it’s a popular location for tornados 🙁

Well known area for Tornados but they’re notoriously difficult to predict so giving warnings is very limited.

Yeah I was being rhetorical allthepies, should have really given my sympathies.

On t’radio this morning they were talking of only 15 mins warning that it was going to hit and the area is built on very hard ground meaning not many houses had basements/shelters.

all schools and other important buildings are designed and put together very well, very strong, heavy and full of redundancy

It’s hard to imagine the power of that thing. I wonder how many more properties/people would survive [a ‘normal’ tornado] if the merkins didn’t have a devotion to building houses from wood and paper?

I wonder how many more properties/people would survive [a ‘normal’ tornado] if the merkins didn’t have a devotion to building houses from wood and paper?

To build a home to withstand a tornado wouldn’t really be a viable option.

I wonder how many more properties/people would survive [a ‘normal’ tornado] if the merkins didn’t have a devotion to building houses from wood and paper?
To build a home to withstand a tornado wouldn’t really be a viable option.

but even with the experience they have of wood framed homes, shurly a concrete or brick wall would be better for at least one room of the home – as a sort of refuge – if they cant be bothered to dig out a basement

Was reading WSJ this morn and from the comments page the gist I took was…

You can build Tornado proof houses (out of concrete) but it’s super expensive and when weighed up against the chances of actually being hit by “God’s finger” even when living in or around so called areas like “Tornado alley” people choose not too.

In the US brick or stone houses aren’t considered ideal for tornado resistance, because they will still blow down anyway, and being buried under bricks is worse than timber.

Concrete bunkers would be too expensive. Although, I do wonder if they’d be that much cheaper to cool in the summer, there might eventually be a payback.

Much cheaper to build shelters in the garden or basements, especially as most houses have basements. Although not all it would seem 🙁

SUVs, climatic change, bigger tornados.

The Queen has sent her commiserations according to Sky News.

Truly biblical- i feel sorry for anyone in it’s path 😯
Mother nature seems to be protesting alot more in recent years, is it global warming or is it a natural periodical spike?

The Queen has sent her commiserations according to Sky News.

Well that’s allright then 😆

Really feel for the survivors/victims – just can’t comprehend what it must be like to be caught in something like that. The photo above looks like when you’ve got bored of playing SImCity and turned on all the disasters at once. Incredible.

SUVs, climatic change, bigger tornados.

I think you’ll find its gay marriage and communists…

On a serious note, mind boggling devestation. This guy is remarkably zen considering…

I saw something of the ongoing clear up in Joplin two years ago about a month after the tornados touched down. There they said three twisters came together trebled it’s force. The tornado scale goes up to 4, they wanted to upgrade Joplin to 5.

Nothing in it’s path survived. Even the concrete multistory hospital was shifted on it’s foundations.

Weirdly a street away from it’s path buildings stood undamaged. It was a sobering sight.

I really feel for the folks in Oklahoma.

Awful news.

Terrifying, one mother sheltering in the bath, (which is what’s recommended), had to hold onto her daughter’s hair to stop her from being dragged out of the bath! To get an idea of the scale, I live a mile from the center of Chippenham, so that tornado would have wiped almost the entire town off the map, leaving just some of the outer housing estates.
Nothing could ever entice me to live in the center states of America.
I really feel for all the poor folks who’s lives have been, literally, torn apart. 🙁

Real mess-
I grew up on a cattle ranch in SW Nebraska and we saw tornadoes in the area virtually every summer. One destroyed our largest barn in the middle of the night (about 100 yards from the house)–the noise is something that is hard to describe and something I will never forget.
Debris broke a few house windows, but otherwise no damage.

It was a normal part of our summers to be woken up by my Dad in the middle of the night for a trip to the basement to wait out a passing storm (a precaution as you couldn’t see what was coming at night).

Needless to say, I moved away from there as soon as I was on my own.