Xtreme weather!

[muckefuck]

I'm surprised not to see more reports and images of storm damage beyond the flooded streets and flying chairs of carneggy's journal. I hope this doesn't mean that a lot of my friends are actually dealing with destruction instead of relishing their close calls. I've got my own stories to tell, but--in the meantime--do tell me yours!

Comments

[lhn.livejournal.com]

Around 3:40 yesterday, I walked into my dentist's office on the 9th floor of Water Tower Place, sat down, and started reading. A little while later, one of the dental assistants started talking about the tornado outside.

"Are you serious?" I really wasn't sure, since the idea sounded so surreal. "Wouldn't that mean we should evacuate?"

"Sure, I'll show you."

I got to the outside door of the office she was pointing me at, but before I really got a chance to see more than gray, it occurred to me that if there was any chance at all that she was correct, the place where I should not be was in front of a giant glass window on a high floor, facing a tornado.

She said, "They said on TV that people should go to the lowest floor." No one in the office seemed to be thinking in terms of acting on this.

I said, "You know, I think I will," and walked out the door and down the hall. After a brief debate with myself on stairs vs. elevator, I took the stairs. I was the only one on the staircase. I sort of wondered how the structure of a skyscraper would deal with a tornado touching down on it.

When I got to the ground floor, I saw a lot of people sheltering from the storm. (A group of what looked to be middle-school cheerleaders were repeatedly singing the refrain from "Singin' in the Rain" in the tunnel that runs under Water Tower Place.) From the narrow view I had of the outside (I came out in the lobby of the Ritz-Carlton, and tried to stay near the core of the building) I could see strong winds and trees bending near horizontal.

I called prilicla to see if she could find out from the net if there was really a tornado downtown. She found a tornado warning, and something about 80-mile-an-hour rotating winds. In retrospect, I'm guessing that that's what the people in the office were seeing. But I still decided to hang out downstairs till the tornado warning was over. (Not completely unreasonably-- apparently the Chicago History Museum did have some windows blown out by the storm, and TV reports were saying that one building had its roof blown onto Lake Shore Drive.)

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

I heard about the roof while on the train home, but monshu couldn't confirm it when I called. But the Sun-Times confirms:

In Chicago, the North Side and the lakefront bore the brunt. Powerful winds gusting past 60 mph blew the roof off a lakefront high-rise, sailing slabs of black tar and yellow insulation onto the southbound lanes of Lake Shore Drive at Montrose. Traffic was choked to one lane.

[mollpeartree.livejournal.com]

I sort of wondered how the structure of a skyscraper would deal with a tornado touching down on it.

Oh not very well at all, I would think. Tornadoes bend steel rather easily. Hospitals in tornado-prone areas like Omaha go with reinforced concrete for protection from twisters.

It's a very, very good idea to go to a basement when you hear a tornado warning. (Underneath stairs is second-best if you've got no basement, I think.)

[robling-t.livejournal.com]

...Except when the basement starts to flood. :/ Fortunately we had the hatches we enough battened from our experience in June (http://robling-t.livejournal.com/198122.html) that we came through this episode okay...

[robling-t.livejournal.com]

(er, "well enough"? whatever...)

[lhn.livejournal.com]

Apparently there's at least one test case:

On March 28, 2000, an F2 (“major damage”) tornado plowed through downtown Forth Worth, Texas.

It made a direct hit on a 37-story, 454-foot skyscraper then called the Bank One Tower. It blew out 80 percent of the 3,540 windows, mostly from flying debris, and destroyed many interior walls. However, the building remained sound, with a ground-floor bank and a top-floor restaurant reopened within six weeks.

The real damage was economic. It proved too expensive to repair the building, and also to tear it down. For over a year, boarded-up windows earned it the nickname Plywood Skyscraper; it now stands totally abandoned.

Skyscrapers are typically built to withstand sustained hurricane-force winds (c. 100-150 mph); the World Trade Center towers swayed only 8 inches in 100-mph winds.

Which at the very least vindicates my "why am I following someone to a window?" reaction, and suggests that I'd probably have been okay once I got downstairs, or even to the stairwell, in the event of a direct hit by an F2 tornado.

Of course, tornadoes go up to F5. The only case I can find of an F5 tornado hitting a skyscraper was the Great Plains Life Building in the 1970 Lubbock, Texas tornado. From what I can tell, that wasn't a direct hit ("The structure was six blocks from the direct path of the twister."), but the 250 mph winds were enough to set the building swaying, blow out windows, and do major structural damage. They were able to repair it, though it took five years, and it's still standing and occupied today.

Apparently, the real place to be would be a nuclear reactor containment building:

On June 24, 1998, the Davis-Besse Nuclear Station in Oak Harbor, Ohio took a direct hit from an F2 tornado about 100 yards wide. It sucked water and debris from the cooling tower and toppled all phone and power lines. But the actual reactor shut down automatically and was unscathed.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission requires all nuclear plants to be tornado-proof. The reactor is typically surrounded by steel-reinforced concrete walls 2 to 7 feet thick, lined with steel and situated underground.

Basically, it’s an ideal storm shelter. An F4 or F5 tornado might be able to damage the outside of such a structure, but the reactor would almost certainly be untouched.

[mollpeartree.livejournal.com]

I have a vivid memory of the top few floors of a tallish hospital being torn clean off in the tornado of 1975 in Omaha, but I couldn't find any pictures to validate it online when I went and looked last week, so that could just be childish embellishment there. (The photos of Bergan-Mercy were all arial, and unaccompanied by detailed descriptions of the damage). On the other hand, it couldn't have been more than 7 or 8 stories high anyway (because nothing in Omaha is), so it wouldn't really have been a skyscraper to begin with.

[off_coloratura]

A tree fell onto a car in our condo lot. Fortunately, the owners of said tree have insurance and are being very helpful.

And I got drenched and was unable to pick up my bike from insidian's.

[alcippe.livejournal.com]

I got some neat-o pics on my blog that I took both during the storm yesterday and this morning as I walked through Lincoln Park to work.

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

monshu talked about seeing trees snapped from their stumps like that, but I hadn't run into any this far north. Thanks.

[lhn.livejournal.com]

Today, I saw a stump and piece of sidewalk at a greater than 45 degree angle from horizontal. The stump was sawed-off-- presumably River Forest had removed the rest of the tree sometime in the last day.