Weather

[Davy]

The Dallas area had reports of 11 tornadoes although since they were all within the same super cell, looks like it could have been 2 or 3 of the same tornadoes dipping up and down out of the clouds. Regardless, it wasn't much fun going through it even though the closest tornado was about 8 miles away.

It has my wife and I talking about about a storm shelter again, which happens every time a major storm gets close. My daughter and family came by to stay a while since they live in a mobile home in the country. The worst part was seeing the fear in my grand kids eyes as the sirens were going off. We had to calm them down. That's only the 3rd time I've heard the sirens go off in our town due to storms in the past 35 years.

Some folks weren't so lucky. Northeast of Dallas there were a lot of homes destroyed, at least 11 people killed and countless injuries.

[Tool Guy - Kg]

Yikes! Terrible damage they do.

Glad you guys are okay. What kinna shelter would you have in mind? Is it something you'd construct, or something you'd purchase as a unit that you essentially bury?

[Kman]

Have you seen the ones that they cut into your garage floor? Made of steel, kinda looks like a little grease pit, but will hold about 10 people if they are all standing.

Good thing is that they won't leak like the kind you bury outside, and they're out of the way. Downside is they're pretty small.

[Davy]

I might want to construct something myself out of concrete, above ground. I hear folks having trouble with water getting into the shelters built below ground although maybe they weren't built right, can't say. I have worked with all kinds of cement and concrete so my experience would help me out if I go that way.

I don't really need a big comfortable shelter like folks have in hurricane areas, just something to jump into for a while to ride out a storm. I did see one online, I believe it is called safeshed, I might check them out. Might be best just to buy one already built.

[Houston Remodeler]

What about a sea box / shipping container ?

[Davy]

Yeah, that is possible. I have seen smaller units, about 16 ft deep. That's a little larger than I have room for.

[Marge]

Scary stuff, especially at night.

[cx]

While those shipping containers are pretty durable, a fella'd wanna give some really serious attention to anchoring them to ol' Momma Earth if they're to be much of a tornado shelter. Lotsa exposed area for their weight, seems to moi.

Require some serious modification to the door latches, too. Well, unless you've got someone to latch you in and, even more importantly, let you back out.

[Kman]

These are the ones I was referring to.

[Tool Guy - Kg]

Winter decided to come to Wisconsin this year, after all. Snow, sleet, ice....yum. Supposedly the remainder of Davy's storm.

[Davy]

I went out looking at the damage from those tornadoes and it looks like the closest one was about 5 miles away. Close enough that we have small pieces of pink and yellow insulation, even small pieces of tar paper, all over town. I was wondering where all the pink insulation was from until someone mentioned the houses that were hit. The area that got hit the worse is about 20-25 miles away.

[Steve C]

Tons of flood-related disasters around here (St. Louis area). Hard to imagine trying to return (when the water level drops far enough) to you house and sort through things, and have everything frozen, as it's been pretty cold since the monumental rains we had last week.

I-55 was shut down one evening last week, with five lanes of traffic at a total standstill from the Meramec river all the way back to downtown St. Louis. Good example of why you should have gas in your tank, an empty bladder, something to eat, and some warm clothes in the vehicle this time of year. I think about 40 roads in the St. Louis area were closed, with some not open yet.

Traffic was shut down in the early evening and the last vehicles weren't cleared till 3:00 the next morning. Imagine sitting in that and needing to pee (or worse), not having a coat, having impatient kids in the car, and/or watching your gas gauge because you still had 1/8 of a tank and should be home in 20 minutes.

The redhead and I are both very thankful that we live on high ground, and don't have to deal with St. Louis traffic.

[Davy]

Yeah, from what I hear, the storms are lining up for California. Which usually means they are here within a couple days and then up your way a couple days after that.

[Errant]

Not much going on here at the moment. In fact, today was warm and sunny. I should have some mixed rain/snow tomorrow, then maybe a foot of white on Wednesday.

[cx]

Low eighties this afternoon. Felt good.