We’ve talked about having one that’s dual purpose - like also a closet. Not sure about the cost of ICF, but if a person had the ability to build with it, it might be worth it. https://www.foxblocks.com/blog/home-construction-built-endure-hurricanes
***Official 2024 Weather Thread***
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I’ve been in an F3 and the Greenfield damage looks A LOT worse.
I’m from McIntire. This is probably the most publicity the town has ever had.
Wondering if it's because it wasn't all that wide of a tornado? I have no clue how they rate them, but watching the Weather Channel this morning they had a drone up following the very clear path through town and they said even though it had multiple vortices it wasn't more than 2 or 3 houses wide based on the path of destruction. Again, I don't know if that is a consideration in rating them or not.
The one I was in was very narrow. Maybe as wide as a football field? It actually went right through the middle of a long pole shed and left each end standing while gutting the middle completely.
Guys, the survey isn't done. EF-3 is confirmed, but still subject to change.
More in-depth examination needed to confirm EF-4 or 5 damage indicators.
Doesn't make a difference if the final rating is today or tomorrow or the next day.
Gotta cross the t's and dot the i's if your work is going to be part of official record.
More in-depth examination needed to confirm EF-4 or 5 damage indicators.
Doesn't make a difference if the final rating is today or tomorrow or the next day.
Gotta cross the t's and dot the i's if your work is going to be part of official record.
The 40,000 foot debris signature would indicate the EF-3 rating will probably change.
I know this won’t appease the folks trying to farm reclaimed duck habitat, but Brad Edwards says Des Moines is less than a half inch above average on precip for the year. YMMV.
If the Minden to Manila ‘nader was tagged an EF4, the swath of destruction in Greenfield is nowhere close. That said, bad is bad.
That's not how it works though.
There's a good video interview out there with Tim Marshall, that explains all this much better. But he gave a version of it at his talk in 2023 at the Central Iowa NWA Doppler Radar and Severe Storms Conference, and has kindly let me use some of his PowerPoint deck for presentations to groups now.
He's a forensic meteorologist/engineer. He's been responsible for developing and updating the damage indicators with the EF-scale, and some in progress updates.
You can't just "eyeball" it. Shoddy construction, improperly installed, missing, old, etc etc can really make you vulnerable to much lower windspeeds.
"All walls gone," which is the quick and dirty explanation of EF-4, can actually occurring in a low-end EF-3 depending on construction.
Check out the lower bound values here on the single family residence damage indicators.
"Swab swept clean" can occur with estimated top-end EF-3 winds. You can't get an accurate EF rating solely from drone views.
Long story short, you can't just eyeball it and get an accurate rating from a drone view.
Might be easy to pick out a bunch of 9s, or even a couple 10s, but now the real work begins to put together an accurate estimate. So you get a preliminary EF3 on first pass since that is the lower bound. Further evidence may change that.
DIs for other stuff are here
Might be easy to pick out a bunch of 9s, or even a couple 10s, but now the real work begins to put together an accurate estimate. So you get a preliminary EF3 on first pass since that is the lower bound. Further evidence may change that.
DIs for other stuff are here
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not sure why people even care what it was rated. lives lost, lives ruined, homes destroyed, etc. really doesn't matter what it was rated.
Found a photo from 1982 in our yard tonight that we are pretty confident came from Greenfield. We live in Ames.
If there's an earthquake with lives lost, does the Richter number not matter?
I don't think anyone is downplaying the loss of property and lives. The biggest eye opener for me, as a dog lover, is seeing that impact and the number of lost pets. Aheinz is staying busy trying to help.
Having an indicator of size immediately like with a Richter scale is useful when reporting about the immediate impact. Having a scale that you may not know the impact for days after doesn’t really do much good other than talking about it over coffee.
It would be much more useful to develop an indicator based on wind speed and elevation to be able to give immediate indicators of strength and impact. Maybe this is asking too much for the radar technology that we have available? Cause what we saw with the multiple funnel clouds seemed a different beast than some of the smaller tornados that we’ve seen this season. Yet there’s not really a method to describe the size of them in the moment.
But why does it matter how fast the rating comes out?
Knowing whether it's an EF3 or EF5 isn't going to change anything that has already happened.
I agree, but I I could also see insurance companies that are already facing financial pressure leverage a payout system that is influenced by a damage rating: "We aren't going to cover your house to the same extent as your neighbors due to your construction methods or not being built to our updated standards....blah blah blah....because you weren't built to handle an EF2 and they were", or some such justification
I have the general path. I was hoping to see drone footage of the path between Cambridge & Colo to see what proximity it had to us.
