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Cool interactive on hurricanes by scale, for thos who don't live on the Gulf Coast, or Taiwan evidently.

http://interactive.foxnews.com/us/weather/saffir-simpson-hurricane-wind-scale

You Americans and your hurricanes. It's so much safer down here. Honestly, of all the nutty places to found a nation...

Whats not noted are the tornadoes. Even a Class One could spawn lots of little tornadoes, especially on the north and west side (the "dirty" side) those usually cause the most damage and deaths inland.

It is amazing that they keep building their houses out of things that cannot withstand a bit of wind...

You see houses that are utterly demolished other than the storm shelter room which has been made out of breeze blocks.

Quick question: Why not build the entire house out of breeze blocks and save yourself the trouble?

But high speed windy swirly things are pretty cool otherwise

SilverMK2 wrote:It is amazing that they keep building their houses out of things that cannot withstand a bit of wind...

You see houses that are utterly demolished other than the storm shelter room which has been made out of breeze blocks.

Quick question: Why not build the entire house out of breeze blocks and save yourself the trouble?

But high speed windy swirly things are pretty cool otherwise

QFT. My house was built during the Cold War, and has concrete walls. Good old paranoia eh? Those tanks don't have anything on us.

psh.... it’s from FOX.

So obviously this is some sort of right wing extremist propaganda...




EDIT: since it is from fox it also can not be trusted... we must look to abc, cnn, or msnbc to make an unbiased version of this.

Thats true I expect Sebster to come and set me to rights with proper news sources shortly.

Building houses out of "Breeze block" (not sure what that is-assuming masonry block) is generally prohbitively expensive. Old houses (I mean as in from the 1800s) generally have heavy tile roofs. Florida housing often has cool grills installed you can pull over glass doors etc.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concrete_masonry_unit

They are one of the quickest and cheapest ways of building houses.

Also can be reinforced quite easily and effectively.

Virtually all houses in the UK (as far as I am aware) are built of bricks faced onto concrete building blocks (or a second layer of bricks), certainly anything bigger than a normal house will be built with them.

No its not the cheapest actually. I should note many houses are made with brick-although more expensive. Thats not going to stop a tornado though.

Here in the UK it is pretty cheap, as we don't tend to build our houses out of wood. About 95%+ of houses are brick.

As far as I remember, they are going to be either dual layers of brick, or a concrete block faced with brick.

And yes, a 4 inch thick breeze block with reinforcement is going to protect you quite well. Add into that an outer later of brick and you are far safer.

You may not save the roof, but the actual structure of the house will not do too badly.

The only thing that will affect this is going to be flying debris. There is not all that much that will stop a car or a tree going at 60+ mph

SilverMK2 wrote:Here in the UK it is pretty cheap, as we don't tend to build our houses out of wood. About 95%+ of houses are brick.

As far as I remember, they are going to be either dual layers of brick, or a concrete block faced with brick.

And yes, a 4 inch thick breeze block with reinforcement is going to protect you quite well. Add into that an outer later of brick and you are far safer.

You may not save the roof, but the actual structure of the house will not do too badly.

The only thing that will affect this is going to be flying debris. There is not all that much that will stop a car or a tree going at 60+ mph

Dear God your houses are bunkers. We are not worthy!

yea I saw a picture once of straw that had gone through a metal light pole.

Hurricanes are fun. You can go outside and enjoy the breeze and the rain just stings your face, and when the power goes out you just have a party in your garage.

Frazzled wrote:Dear God your houses are bunkers. We are not worthy!

yea I saw a picture once of straw that had gone through a metal light pole.

We build to last here... we have houses made of wood, straw and cow poo older than the USA

I experienced two earthquakes live last week.

I love earthquakes.

First year undergrad, just started. Sitting in math class. Rumbling occurs. I'm thinking a dinosaur's walking by (we had them back then). People start freaking out. My prof, an Iranian shouts out quake! and RUNS out (those who don't know Iran is subject to bad quaking on occasion). Everyone else bails. I stand there and meader out thinking "you [censored description of female parts]people would be dead within seconds of real weather."

I always LOVED earthquakes.

You want safe, you move to Ottawa. The only natural disaster is a lack of personality.

I think I'll pass,I experinced Hurricane Katrina up close and personal,that was all the experince I'll ever need.

Yay Kansas!!! Now hurricanes, no earthquakes, the only thing I have to worry about is a wildfire, as I live on a high hill in the middle of the city so it would take the sort of tornado that only happens on the sci-fi channel to get to me.

warpcrafter wrote:I live on a high hill in the middle of the city so it would take the sort of tornado that only happens on the sci-fi channel to get to me.

You must live on the only hill in Kansas....