Tornado outbreak.

[Woodhauler]

Hope all are safe! Very scary to see on the news! :(

[drobertson]

Just devastating winds, tonight will be a restless one for many.

[hillbillyhogs]

used to live out that way. Spent many nights in the basement so I didn't have to go up and down the stairs!!

[okmulch]

Twisters all south of us. One yesterday only about 40 miles south though.

[POSTON WIDEHEAD]

It's just hard to believe what wind can do to a school and hospital as good as those are built.

[thecfarm]

We had a late supper so I saw the news. Prayers sent out for all affected. Very sad to see.

[WmFritz]

I've got two daughters, sil's and 5 grandkids west of Oklahoma City. It was pretty intense for a while this afternoon. Grandkids locked down at school... one daughter hunkered down in a closet... the other driving out of the storms path. Daughter #1 said the twister touched down a mile from her house.

My family had a good scare today. My heart goes out to the folks who weren't so fortunate.

[Bibbyman]

I have a smart phone and pad. Each have several weather apps loaded.  Each app has several locations identified.   Every time a warning is issued a notice is sent out from each app for each affected location on both devices.  Chimes, tweets, and jingles go off for a good bit. 

Heavy storm front just past through.  I think we're under tornado watch until 2:30am.

[logwalker]

I really don't know how you guys do it out there. My hat goes off to you all. I pray you are all safe tonight. Joe

[ET]

My wife and I are leaving for Texas tomorrow morning, as my daughter,SIL and grandson live in Houston. I pray this bad weather pattern is over for everybody.

[Woodhauler]

Death toll is climbing,and i am afraid it will be much higher. :(

[Chuck White]

Prayers going out for all the folks in that area!

[Randy88]

Our hearts sank as we saw the news, my wifes best freind and her family live in moore oklahoma, spent most of last night on the internet looking at maps and making calls, finally got through, her entire family is fine, boys, wifes and girlfreinds, but their house was less than two miles from the path of the tornado, they filmed it as it went through, a few of the boy's houses and the inlaws houses they didn't know about, other than the people were fine, they couldn't get home to see those houses yet, just total destruction and devostation, that's three tornado's they have lived through in the moore area since 1999, totally unbelievable.     

The really crazy thing is most houses down there don't have a basement or storm shelter in them.   Our friends had a new storm shelter put into their new house when they built it, can't imagine schools not having anything either for a storm shelter built into them.     

So everyone hug your loved ones today, we just never know.   

[okmulch]

The really crazy thing is most houses down there don't have a basement or storm shelter in them.   Our friends had a new storm shelter put into their new house when they built it, can't imagine schools not having anything either for a storm shelter built into them.     

Most Older schools here in Oklahoma do not have the structural walls for tornados but the new schools being built like the two new elementary schools here in Stillwater have several halls that are tube shaped with reinforced steel and steel doors that can be lowered on the ends for safety.
The ground here is does not work well with basements and that is why most shelters are separate and buried out side in the yards.

Our house has a shelter under the garage with two and a half  feet concrete ceiling and walls. It also has a long tube we can escape through if the house falls on top of the entrance in the garage.

[davch00]

It's just hard to believe what wind can do to a school and hospital as good as those are built.

It's amazing the power these things have. We had one come through our area a few years ago and I can assure you it's not something you want to witness first hand. 

[Shotgun]

Most Older schools here in Oklahoma do not have the structural walls for tornados but the new schools being built like the two new elementary schools here in Stillwater have several halls that are tube shaped with reinforced steel and steel doors that can be lowered on the ends for safety. The ground here is does not work well with basements and that is why most shelters are separate and buried out side in the yards.

Aaron, can you enlighten us a little more about the type of soil (ground) that you are speaking about in your quote?  I know that many have wondered just why more OK folks don't have tornado shelters.

Thanks in advance.

Norm

[Larry]

High water tables with clay soils is not a good medium for basements.  Think mold, smells, and cracked walls.  With modern construction and polymers, basement construction is now possible but comes with a high price.  Too expensive for most.

Much of Arkansas, Texas, and southern Missouri have the same soil conditions.  A tornado shelter like a pit in the garage or safe room have become popular options.  In Arkansas there is a program to reimburse homeowners for a portion of the cost of building a shelter.  The program is broke because the Feds quit funding it.

[Magicman]

For that reason, there are virtually no basements in our part of Mississippi.

[Al_Smith]

My sympathy goes out to all involved .It seems poor old Oklahoma gets the brunt of the winds including most central western states .

I remember the second or third most serious tornado event in the USA being the Palm Sunday tornados of Indiana ,Ohio and Mich in 1965 . It is unbelievable the forces of nature .You could not have done that much damage with 50 flights of WW2 B-17s' .

[crtreedude]

My heart goes out to those who were hit by this twister. A few years ago, I lost my aunt to the one which went through Joplin MO.

[Busy Beaver Lumber]

I lived on the East coast for almost 31 years and endured numerous hurricanes and all their fury. I will take a half dozen of them any day of the week over a single tornado. At least with the Hurricane you know a week in advance it is coming and have time to prepare and run and hide in a safe place. Not to say they don't do even more damage than a tornado, but if you head the warnings and seek shelter in a safe place, the chance of loosing ones life is very limited.

[Randy88]

Larry, I've done a lot of drainage type work, agricultural tiling in perticular, drained anything from swampy ground to solid blue, white, and yellow clay.    Granted I've never dug or tiled in your part of the country, but if the ground is solid enough to build on or drive on, I can't imagine it being too wet or the water table too high to dig a basement in.   Could you elaborate a little more on how deep the wells are in your area, or why the excessive costs to building a basement inyour part of the country verses other parts.    Also do they set all the houses on pilings to hold the house up and prevent them from sinking then?   

I just put a service pit in my shop last summer, and in order to get it to work, we installed almost 800 feet of tile and have a permanently mounted sump pump under the pit to pump water out, which kicks in every 15 minutes 24/7/365 and will do so for all the years we will ever use it, its just standard operating procedure in my area, yet 99% of houses have basements here.

[davch00]

Here in southeast Missouri the ground doesn't work to well with basements either for the same reasons Larry states.  I don't know about Oklahoma but here the most 2 inch wells are only 40' deep, but most of the time you will hit water a lot shallower than that. The 40' deep is just a common stopping point as it tends to be deep enough to be in good water.

I know that some 10"-12" irrigation wells around that have the pump on the surface will "run dry" if the water table falls below 26'. While people with say run dry it doesn't, it's just that the pump won't prime because of the weight of water. As dry as it was last summer I only heard of a couple pumps that lost their prime because of low water table.

Right now will all the rain we have been getting I would guess the water table is only a few feet deep.

[beenthere]

Puzzling me too. I know of several outdoor swimming pools built in OK, and a couple I've been in that were in Moore, OK. Seems if the ground is ok for a concrete pool, then that plus a house on top would equal a basement or a shelter potential.
It may just be the extra expense of a basement (digging it out and pouring the concrete complete with drain tile and sump pumps to keep extracting the water that seeps in as is often the case and the way it is done in the north for a basement).

[mesquite buckeye]

I think the basement thing is more tradition that real limitation. In the north, part of the reason for a basement is to get the foundation below the frost line. By the time you dig 6-8 feet deep, you have pretty much gotten to the depth of a basement anyway.

In the south, I would be surprised if you need to go much over 3 feet for a footer depth.

Lots of OK, TX and other states south and west don't have water table issues, but they also don't have the tradition of basements.

Even though the water table in Tucson runs 300 or more feet deep, there are hardly any basements in the region. This is in spite of the fact that our average soil temperature at basement depth is 72° and would not require either heating or cooling.

The bottom line is that it is simply cheaper to build a house on a concrete slab, eliminating the cost of digging/disposal of soil removed, plus you still have to pour a concrete floor and have to build and seal an 8' soil retaining wall around the hole, plus you still need to frame out the floor, providing for overhead weight. I understand why they do it, it is just too bad the money gets spent in other parts of the house and to a more profitable situation for the builder, even though the end product may not be as good.

All of that said, how much is it worth to save your life and that of your family? People, even in tornado alley don't think of it happening to them, always somebody else. This is the hard part about preparing for infrequent, but disasterous contingencies.

Think earthquake worthy construction  proximal to the New Madrid fault, Megavolcano preps within 1000 miles of Yellowstone or the Long Valley Caldera in S California. Worldwide preps for the asteroid impact or deflection. All good projects that don't get done because we have no memory of such things happening. All  are coming. Woe to those who fail to prepare for the inevitable. We spend our time just getting by for today. That is what the dinosaurs did. See how well it worked out for them?   EOR (end of rant)