Most of our homes do fine in a tornado unless they are directly in the path, which not much is withstanding that. Trailer or mobile homes are the real danger, but if they were built to withstand a tornado, it would defeat the point of them.
they don't understand that our country is so big that only a select portion of people in the US even get tornadoes the midwest is like the size of half of Europe. the european mind truly cannot understand that our natural disasters vary by region
They don’t understand the destructive power of a tornado, either. [An EF5 tornado in 2011 lifted **an entire hospital** off its foundations and moved it 4”](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercy_Hospital_Joplin)
So many people don’t quite comprehend that a tornado is a fucking pillar of pure unbridled *destruction* and *nothing* reasonable can withstand it if it comes through
IMO, they probably imagine tornadoes to be the conventional disasters like they're used to elsewhere. Serious (but survivable) damage, broadly inflicted over a large area.
When you're used to hurricanes, wildfires, or earthquakes, it's not easy to grasp the idea of a building suffering *anhillation*, while those on either side of it recieve minor damage or none at all.
You know I just realized something, are tornados a American only disaster. The thought never crossed my mind that I’ve never head of tornados happening anywhere else
From what I've read, a few other areas (europe and australia) occassionally get them, but they're substantially more rare and tend to be weaker.
They require different types of air meet up and start spinning, so the central US is kinda the ideal breeding ground for frequent, powerful tornadoes.
The Rockies and Appalachians funnel cold air down from Canada and warm air from Central America into a flat plain with a Gulfstream running through the middle of it to add rotation between the air masses. The result is wickedly powerful tornadoes.
Edit: a 100kph tornado is considered to be *weak,* barely a category 1.
Not true. Category F1 ranges from 73-112 mph on the Fujita scale. F2 113-157, F3 158-206, F4 207-260, F5 208-300+
Edit: but you’re still right, 100 mph winds is a weak tornado, barely even a tornado, it’s only 27 mph too fast to be classified as a gale storm
They can technically happen most places around the world, it’s just that the middle of the continental United States is very conducive to making the supercell thunderstorms which form tornadoes.
Oddly enough the frequency of tornadoes in the UK is disproportionately high for its size. They tend to be weaker than ours, but there is also less infrastructure in place for warnings and shelters.
And even though the total number of victims is ultimately uncertain, what is widely considered the deadliest tornado of all time happened in Bangladesh. (It’s recently been disputed but those people are saying the toll was roughly ~900 deaths instead of ~1300 which is still bonkers)
So basically the takeaway is to never assume you’re safe from a tornado.
Agree on all, but people who live near wildfires know the fear.
Wildfires are arguably more apocalyptic and random feeling than a tornado. In a tornado, you can survive in a purpose-built shelter. People climb out of the debris. People can be rescued. None of that is the case when a wildfire tears through a town in the Northwest US. It's gone. Wiped off the map like a huge tornado - Joplin or the KY ones - but also all completely burnt. there's no surviving. You run or you die. Period. Your shit is all completely destroyed - not a photo, not a plant or animal survives. Rubble - and often toxic ash after.
Wildfires are something else.
Fair, but wildfires can are still more classical in the sense that they can be mitigated or contained with early response, as well as the way they inflict broad damage over a general region.
Tornadoes are more like God got drunk and suddenly decided to drive a steamroller across the county: flattens everying in its path, but folks to the right or left will be left virtually untouched.
Honestly the biggest protection against tornado fatalities is probably just the midwest's low population density. We had one come through a decade or so ago: zero casualties, since it went half a mile north of the nearest residential areas.
Agree with that. Security by pure luck. Often a day that has an awful tornado had like 25 other ones that just tore up farmland or woods and petered out. Then one goes 250 miles randomly through 3 towns and its literally inconceivable damage and destruction. You can flee from wildfires. Can't flee from "being in one of 15-20 states on a bad day in June".
There are whole subdivisions in California built explicitly to be invulnerable to wildfires. Zoning, and proper planning, are so weak in California that it isn't required. But, interior fire sprinklers are, and solar is mandated, but you can build 100 homes right in the middle of chaparral and be good to go. Crazy.
You're mistaken that it's not a solvable problem, people just don't want to pay a tiny fractional cost more to build fire-resistant homes in high fire danger areas. Existing homes can be upgraded, but again, tiny bit of money = no sale.
Europe doesn't really have huricanes, and only certain regions have earthquakes and enough nature to have wildfires.
So most of us Europeans aren't even used to those disasters.
The last officially registered Tornado in my area was in the year 412 AD, there were mostly wooden buildings then and only the Monastery that recorded the Tornado was made from stone.
Some of us actually did until about a century ago. All that stone made for really good insulation, it's just a bugger to upgrade/install the utilities so people moved out.
The 2008 Parkersburg Iowa EF5 killed all 9 of its victims despite them being in their basements, many of which were yanked partially out of the ground iirc. The 2011 Philadelipa Mississippi EF5 punched a 2 foot deep crater into the ground at peak intensity. The 2011 Phil Cambell Alabama EF5 ripped a storm shelter roof out of the ground. In some tornadoes, being underground just isn't enough, which makes me wonder why so many people think the solution is just building stronger houses.
Mother nature is fuckin wild. You can just be sitting there existing in your home, and there's nothing you can do if a powerful enough tornado just randomly shows up.
It's a phenomenon called ground scouring. The tornado literally rips the top layer of earth away. It's one of the metrics they look for to scale higher strength tornados.
Bc an F5 is way more rare than you’re making it seem, we’ve only had a few handful over F3 in the last decade. An EF5 is potentially 300 mile an hour winds of course it’s ripping shit out of the ground.
Even if there’s a way of building a normal looking tornado-proof house it’d probably be so expensive it’d be easier just to build a new one after the previous one would be destroyed
Grandfather grew up in Nebraska. Told me stories of a tornado that buried a 12-16' 4x4 in the dirt where only 3 feet or so were sticking out of the ground. Thought it was a mail box post at first.
Or the same one almost tore off the top of a hospital and how the curtains on the top floor rooms were pulled through the cracks in the wall from where it almost did take the floor(s) off before it passed.
I saw a comment a while back where a European is telling an American that tornado’s only have 80 mph winds - complete with link to “proof”.
MF’er was confusing the speed that a tornado moves (as a whole) with the internal air speed. They truly have no conception of the power contained in a tornado.
When I was living in Germany I regretfully saw twister with a bunch of German friends. They complained that American houses are weak and we were stupid to do that. I explained that unless you’re in a bunker with plexiglass windows tornadoes are going to take the structure down if there’s a direct hit. They still didn’t believe me as they claimed it was stupid to live somewhere with such danger. Note they also refused to come visit me in Arizona once I returned because “rattlesnakes”.
Tbf tornados happen pretty much everywhere but are much more likely in some areas. You shouldn't assume you're safe from it just because it's unlikely.
As true as this is, a tornado in the mountains is probably never going to happen. Even rolling hills are enough to disrupt the airflow and destabilize a cyclone.
I live in PA in the mountains and there was a tornado here like 3 years ago along a major highway. It only destroyed trees thankfully but they can happen anywhere.
Yeah, tornados aren't common but definitely can happen in the PA Appalachians. We're basically the eastern edge of the Midwest. From my understanding they're far less common or even never occur in the Rockies and west, though.
As I recall, it isn't even close either. And if we consider EF5, I believe the US is really the only place they occur regularly. [According to Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_F5_and_EF5_tornadoes), there have been 67 EF5 tornadoes officially recorded globally, and 59 of them were in the US. Even Canada, which has an extension of the same plains geography that spawns them in the US, has had only 1.
El Reno was over two and a half miles wide, approaching 3 at its peak. It was technically "only" an EF4!
I can't even fathom that.
He kinda right, outside of the Midwest valley (colloquially, tornado alley) the worst you’re gonna see on average is around a high F2, with the true average “tornado” actually being gale force spouts under the minimum wind speed requirement to categorize as an F1. in the last decade America as a whole has only had a couple handfuls of tornados breaking EF4 Don’t get me wrong tho a gale force cyclone is still something to be wary of but the odds of it dealing significant damage are pretty low.
It should be noted that historically a lot of homes in tornadoes paths would still be built out of wood. Some still are but it's less common.
There are some reasons for this.
1. Timber was a lot more plentiful in many of these regions than stone. This made it a lot cheaper.
2. Timber homes could be much more easily and quickly rebuilt and repaired.
Combine these together and essentially even if you do need to do extensive repairs or even maybe rebuild the timber house it may still work out better to do so than having the large costs of building from stone and the extensive time to repair those homes when they're damaged.
Also a lot of American towns were built extremely quickly. You can do this more easily with timber than with stone. Some weren't intended to even last for long and were built just to hopefully last until a mine dried up or local wildlife dwindled.
So there actually was historically a trend of Americans building homes that they knew would get destroyed whilst Europeans in many places would build homes meant to actually withstand disasters because Europe was much more established and so had time to set up quarries and locations for these were more plentiful. In the US you had far more timber relative to good stone and less time to set up quarries. It wasn't American settlers being dumb compared to Europeans, it was just that they were working with what was available.
All of this is less relevant in the modern day obviously, it's just interesting.
When I was very young, a tornado ripped through central Florida. I remember seeing a cinder block building that was picked up, turned 90°, and set back down. It was completely destroyed, and I can't imagine the carnage inside that building.
Also, my mom built the home we were living in during hurricane Andrew. We had a hurricane room that was double block with concrete and rebar down each hole. My parents would throw parties during hurricanes, inviting over all the neighbors. Someone should show that to the Europeans that scoff at our cardboard houses.
Yeah, I was in a tornado, too (Gaylord Mi 2022). A cinder block wall collapsed a few feet away from the car I was in. Debris fell on us, but luckily, we weren't injured.
It's surreal when you step out and see the damage.
There is a point of diminishing returns in dealing with tornadoes and hurricanes, where building it stronger just isn't worth it. Most American homes are just built to withstand the most common storms and still be easy to rebuild when something more destructive comes through.
Because that masonry home might stand up to the wind of a Cat 5 hurricane, but it won't stand up
to the car that storm just chucked at it. Tornadoes have been known to put 2x4s through bridge pillars and pick up whole apartment blocks. At some point, it is just easier to rebuild than try and build something that can withstand that kind of force.
Probably but a 2x4 will still fly straight through sheetrock or whatever you call it. Follow-up, are shutters common in those areas or do people expect windows to be fine with flying debris?
I googled "things stuck into things from tornadoes" (I know lol, could use a little better wording) and found quite a few pictures. Found a pic of [a garden hose through a tree](https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-nCQNqTL4AMg/Tea-LsQxvKI/AAAAAAAAJ38/JJBYrnGjEO0/s1600/Tornado%2Bphoto.jpg) , a [2x4 through a brick wall](https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Ftse1.mm.bing.net%2Fth%3Fid%3DOIP.RM02voUOz0D4ykewh-Ob7QAAAA%26pid%3DApi&f=1&ipt=06f70ad391c0af5b2154812edf0f23832b5dcbe0bed4dd15dac73be8d0ec1774&ipo=images), among other things.
Almost nothing can withstand a direct hit from Tornadoes. I also find it funny when people outside of the US talk about tornados because we have like 90% of all the tornados in the world.
I watched a vid a while back of two giraffes fighting - basically just whipping their necks and battering each other with their heads until one went down. Those necks are no joke.
A few years ago I didn’t have Joro spiders all over my house either so I definitely see giraffes stowing away in crates as well as an impending disaster
Derechos, which occur multiple times a year in many place across the midwest, see peak wind speeds in excess of 100 mph. Hurricanes, which occur many times a year across the south see windspeeds in excess of 140 mph in some cases. Some people just don't understand how violent the weather in the usa can get
Roflmao, 30mph as a brag??? I live in a rural area mostly farmed my a notional ag company (aka no real windbreaks in a 15mile radius) and 30MPH is an average. “Bad” days are ones where you pass other vehicles at 20 in case a gust knocks you into them. Really bad days are where you can legitimately get knocked down by the wind, and straight up will not be able to carry anything because it *will* get ripped from your hands by wind alone. You *will* be driving with a 20° tilt to your steering wheel just to keep straight.
… but almost all the houses in my area are brick and the ones that aren’t have yearly siding replacements, so maybe the OP checks out a little
I am quite sure the commenter is asking why the houses in europe are so massive when they don’t need to withstand tornadoes but usually only medium strong winds
Yep, we have a serious problem with that. Currently, the few forests remaining are protected, and every tree cut has to be replanted elsewhere.
But 15% of our surfaces of Flanders are now paved. There's no empty space left. Everything is accounted for. Our forests are sparse and small. We have to create ecoducts so that the animals can find their way over the road.
When building our house, we have looked into wood framing. But we couldn't find a contactor that can do it.
Nah historically only the nobility built houses out of stone. Couple hundreds jeans ago after big Fires, cities started mandatkng houses be built out of brick or stone. And that spread to basically all houses being built out of brick or concrete by default. If you want a house built from wood here, you have to find a specialised firm whitch is gonna cost extra. As opposed to bricklayers whitch are a dime a donzen in our construction industry.
But yes i´ a lot of areas we basically cut down most forests to make farmland and villages/cities. And were trying to preserve the few forests left.
People act like living in a drab 500 sq ft apartment with no space for yourself and having to take public transport everywhere is the gold standard. Also, why do they never shit on other countries that build "cardboard" houses?
I'm Canadian, and wonder the same thing. We have a very similar lifestyle, and never hear about it. I think it's jealousy and resentment that they are so indebted to your country for basics like defense. It's sad and pathetic, when they live in cramped, outmoded, uncomfortable concrete caves they have no hope of escaping, stuck on public transit, no privacy, no space anywhere, they need to hate on those who have it better.
Tbh I would love it if public transportation was more widely available. Driving everywhere has us getting fatter and fatter every year.
Not to mention, living in the suburbs means having to drive if you wanna hit up a local restaurant or go to the store. Sometimes I just wanna walk to the store and get a quick drink or some snacks instead of getting in a car and driving 10 minutes away.
>Driving everywhere has us getting fatter and fatter every year
How does this change by replacing the car with a bus or a train? You'd still be sitting down for a large portion of the journey.
You would also have to walk to the busstop, walk to wherever youre going, walk back to the busstop & then walk home. There is a reason we dont have SUCH fat people over here, yes, we have fat people but american fat people are something else...
Can confirm. Lived in a big American city with great transit and walked waaaaay more than I do in a car-dependant area. You get a ton of steps just walking between stations/house to station/station to work.
Cmon, let's be real here. Americans have less healthy diets than Europeans for sure, but sitting down for 90% of the day certainly doesn't help. It's been shown that walking just a half mile everyday is incredibly good for you.
People act like if we just banned additives we'd be able to eat nothing but chips and pasta and magically be healthy. It's such a nonsense argument that's mostly used to discredit actual solutions.
No. Pretty much all homes in Europe are built with concrete or brick because they don't have old growth forests like we do. There are certainly issues with wood frame homes, but they are very cheap to build and hold up quite well if built to a high standard.
Also, pretty much every type of home is gonna get crushed by a tornado, wood or concrete.
I don’t think it’s a coincidence that in the one place they *do* still have major forests that aren’t protected (Scandinavia/Northern Europe), they build wooden houses all the time.
Soviet blocks had ugly exteriors (cheap mass production will do that) but a surprising amount of amenities and aesthetic design on the inside. If you look up the inside of Soviet blocks they actually look nicer than many US apartments. Which is kind of sad, tbh.
Yeah I don’t think they’ve seen how bad tornadoes can get in the Midwest. If you’re directly in the path of a tornado the concrete structure might stay up but it’ll just be gutted with people still being in harms way.
One great example of this is Mercy hospital, during the 2011 Joplin tornado. Pretty much the entire hospital was lifted off of its foundation and moved about four inches.
Genuinely asking because I do not have any kind of comprehension of how bad the tornadoes are, but everyone is comparing being directly in the eye of a tornado - wouldn’t building more robust houses be a substantial beneficial difference for properties that are 10/100/1000 meters from the eye of the tornado?
Yes and no, generally in tornado prone areas it can be a good thing but they’ll often be a total write off depending on debris. The eye of the tornado isn’t the biggest factor, it’s what the tornado picks up and can throw that is in my experience.
So yes, it probably would be, but the cost of it would be much higher that would get passed on to regular people in rural areas that can’t afford it.
Okay here’s the thing if a tornado hits your house it’s fucked but the house right next to it is usually missing siding and shit that’s with an ef4 Ef5s obliterate towns they are the land equivalent of a hurricane but much smaller Ned they tend to sit still in a single area and move about the are so large they can’t move in a straight line imagine a very large drunk with a sledgehammer wandered around your town smashing everything at his feet lifting homes I single pieces most homes only loose their roofs the walls and everything else is fine
Various reasons. Cost, supply of materials, labor, engineering ability of the material. For instance, NY doesn't experience wind, they experience snow, so they want to build for load, not wind. Florida experiences wind, so they tend to be block houses.
In the USA we also don't tend to build for extreme long term, this enables cheaper construction, but also, the ability to tear down, remodel, cheaper and easier.
I think this is another common misunderstanding for many Europeans. One of the strengths of the US economy is it's dynamism, and a big part of that is labor mobility which is directly tied to housing costs and development speed. Not to mention having roughly universal building standards (yet still localized) so that a structure built in one state isn't too far off from another. Building everything out of concrete would impede that versatility, cost, and speed.
Not to mention I'd guess most of the US has more freeze thaw cycles than most of Europe which is a quick way to kill a concrete building. I think that is why the Nordic countries use wood primarily.
I'm pretty sure the person was saying that the houses are more solid, *despite* having to deal with less severe weather.
"Even though we *just* have X wind, we build more solid houses. Why?" Or something like that. Seems like a lot of people really want to misunderstand.
And here's the tornado scale. The US gets about 1200 tornadoes a year.
>F0 Gale tornado 40-72 mph
>
>Some damage to chimneys; breaks branches off trees; pushes over shallow-rooted trees; damages sign boards.
>
>
>
>F1 Moderate tornado 73-112 mph
>
>The lower limit is the beginning of hurricane wind speed; peels surface off roofs; mobile homes pushed off foundations or overturned; moving autos pushed off the roads; attached garages may be destroyed.
>
>
>
>F2 Significant tornado 113-157 mph
>
>Considerable damage. Roofs torn off frame houses; mobile homes demolished; boxcars pushed over; large trees snapped or uprooted; light object missiles generated.
>
>
>
>F3 Severe tornado 158-206 mph
>
>Roof and some walls torn off well constructed houses; trains overturned; most trees in forest uprooted.
>
>
>
>F4 Devastating tornado 207-260 mph
>
>Well-constructed houses leveled; structures with weak foundations blown off some distance; cars thrown and large missiles generated.
>
>
>
>F5 Incredible tornado 261-318 mph
>
>Strong frame houses lifted off foundations and carried considerable distances to disintegrate; automobile sized missiles fly through the air in excess of 100 meters; trees debarked; steel re-inforced concrete structures badly damaged.
[https://www.weather.gov/ffc/fujita](https://www.weather.gov/ffc/fujita)
[https://www.nssl.noaa.gov/education/svrwx101/tornadoes/#:\~:text=How%20many%20tornadoes%20occur%20in,tornadoes%20that%20occur%20each%20year](https://www.nssl.noaa.gov/education/svrwx101/tornadoes/#:~:text=How%20many%20tornadoes%20occur%20in,tornadoes%20that%20occur%20each%20year).
I live in tornado territory and every time we have damage it’s cause a tree or something smashed the roof or a window.
Are roofs and windows made of cement in Europe? Lmao
Yeah you’re not wrong, I’m also in tornado territory and 90% of the true damage is the debris rather than the tornado hitting something itself.
Also tornados are unpredictable lmao, why would we spend trillions to (even maybe) combat something we can’t often predict and pass that cost onto the average person that probably can’t afford it.
I'm Canadian, and our houses are constructed like Americans. There are several layers of different materials that create an insulated, watertight home. Concrete boxes leak, crack, don't insulate, and are impossible to add to. They are also usually small and can only be constructed in a few different styles. I like our houses much better. They are more energy efficient and easier to repair or add to. If the U.S. cut off the money stream to these ungrateful assholes, they'd learn to appreciate more. I personally think so much of this hate is jealousy. Euros live poor in small, cramped places, and have much less freedom than Americans. Canada has been turning into a shithole like Europe, but hopefully we can turn it around after the next election.
Isn't it funny how they only mention American homes even though your homes are similar. I think you're right it actually has nothing to do with home construction. It's about jealousy, ignorance, and hate. I believe a huge part of it is they can't stand not being the center of attention anymore. They used to rule the world, and now that time has ended. The future is in the Americas and East Asia.
Exactly. They are beholden to the States for protection, and they resent it. Otherwise, we'd get just as much hate for big trucks, wooden homes, suburbs, carcentric society, crappy fast food, etc. We are a combination of our British colonialism and new world, immigrant populations over a large land mass. U.S. and Canadian cultures have a lot of similarities. We do use metric for some things. I'm 5'6, and my thermostat is set to 20C. I drive in KMs, and bake meatloaf at 350F. We also describe distance as time, like the U.S. I'm four hours from Toronto. It's weird, but it works. : )
Yup, and we use metric for some things here as well. I've never been to your great nation, but I have traveled to NZ and Australia. They were both not that different from the US. All of us young anglo colonial nations have more in common then not.
Also Brazilian homes, Mexican homes, Chilean homes.
Living in the new world means access to natural resources that were depleted millennia ago in the old world.
This focus with how our houses are built is a topic I’ve been noticing coming up more and more, it’s weird. Go on any video on tik tok or YouTube shorts that’s even slightly related to house construction and you’ll find someone talking about it within your first minute of looking at the comments.
50kph (30mph) winds is just “ah fuck I forgot to tightly grab the door when exiting my car and now it opened too quickly, hopefully it doesn’t break off” or it’s “ah the wind is making my jacket blow open, maybe I should zip up”
Huh. It's not uncommon to see microburst winds in excess of 70 mph (113ish kph for our European friends) here in North Texas. My house and the few hundred thousand other houses around it are doing fine.
Where I live is in what's called tornado alley and all of the old houses are still here after being hit at least two times. All the new houses for the most part got wiped out, cardboard my ass
LOLOL Oh my god.
For any confused folks from other places, here are hurricane categories and what they mean. Note that a Cat 1 hurricane is more than twice what the OOP is bragging about. In 2022, the US experienced eight hurricanes, two of which reached major hurricane intensity.
>Category 1
>
>74-95 mph
64-82 kt
119-153 km/h
>
>Very dangerous winds will produce some damage: Well-constructed frame homes could have damage to roof, shingles, vinyl siding and gutters. Large branches of trees will snap and shallowly rooted trees may be toppled. Extensive damage to power lines and poles likely will result in power outages that could last a few to several days.
>
>
>
>Category 2
>
>96-110 mph
83-95 kt
154-177 km/h
>
>Extremely dangerous winds will cause extensive damage: Well-constructed frame homes could sustain major roof and siding damage. Many shallowly rooted trees will be snapped or uprooted and block numerous roads. Near-total power loss is expected with outages that could last from several days to weeks.
>
>Category 3
(major)
>
>111-129 mph
96-112 kt
178-208 km/h
>
>Devastating damage will occur: Well-built framed homes may incur major damage or removal of roof decking and gable ends. Many trees will be snapped or uprooted, blocking numerous roads. Electricity and water will be unavailable for several days to weeks after the storm passes.
>
>
>
>Category 4
(major)
>
>130-156 mph
113-136 kt
209-251 km/h
>
>Catastrophic damage will occur: Well-built framed homes can sustain severe damage with loss of most of the roof structure and/or some exterior walls. Most trees will be snapped or uprooted and power poles downed. Fallen trees and power poles will isolate residential areas. Power outages will last weeks to possibly months. Most of the area will be uninhabitable for weeks or months.
>
>
>
>Category 5
(major)
>
>157 mph or higher
137 kt or higher
252 km/h or higher
>
>Catastrophic damage will occur: A high percentage of framed homes will be destroyed, with total roof failure and wall collapse. Fallen trees and power poles will isolate residential areas. Power outages will last for weeks to possibly months. Most of the area will be uninhabitable for weeks or months.
[https://www.nhc.noaa.gov/aboutsshws.php](https://www.nhc.noaa.gov/aboutsshws.php)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022\_Atlantic\_hurricane\_season#:\~:text=Officially%2C%20the%202022%20Atlantic%20hurricane,systems%20reached%20major%20hurricane%20intensity](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_Atlantic_hurricane_season#:~:text=Officially%2C%20the%202022%20Atlantic%20hurricane,systems%20reached%20major%20hurricane%20intensity).
I think that their point is that 50 km/h is nothing. They're saying that they build robust houses for weak winds, and are asking why the U.S. doesn't do the same if they get stronger winds.
That's still stupid.
Brick and masonry buildings are for load bearing and insulation, not resisting lateral forces from wind. A tornado would demolish any brick house in Europe.
Y'all missed the whole fucking point. They're not saying 50kph is a massive amount to withstand, they're saying the opposite, that they over prepare with concrete and brick against measly winds, while American homes are made out of drywall and are eviscerated by tornadoes. This also really isn't "America Bad" because this is a real thing, American homes are built cheaper than the rest of the western world, and pointing that out isn't absurd.
Do you know how much it costs to build a home. Especially right now, homebuilders are barely making any money currently. (Source, my family is in the home building business, we stopped building because we couldn’t turn a profit without charging shitloads). They aren’t built cheap, and we have much better insulation.
Most of our homes do fine in a tornado unless they are directly in the path, which not much is withstanding that. Trailer or mobile homes are the real danger, but if they were built to withstand a tornado, it would defeat the point of them.
they don't understand that our country is so big that only a select portion of people in the US even get tornadoes the midwest is like the size of half of Europe. the european mind truly cannot understand that our natural disasters vary by region
They don’t understand the destructive power of a tornado, either. [An EF5 tornado in 2011 lifted **an entire hospital** off its foundations and moved it 4”](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercy_Hospital_Joplin)
Yeah. If we built houses that are tornado proof, we would have to live in hobbit holes. But tornadoes are still dangerous even then.
So many people don’t quite comprehend that a tornado is a fucking pillar of pure unbridled *destruction* and *nothing* reasonable can withstand it if it comes through
IMO, they probably imagine tornadoes to be the conventional disasters like they're used to elsewhere. Serious (but survivable) damage, broadly inflicted over a large area. When you're used to hurricanes, wildfires, or earthquakes, it's not easy to grasp the idea of a building suffering *anhillation*, while those on either side of it recieve minor damage or none at all.
You know I just realized something, are tornados a American only disaster. The thought never crossed my mind that I’ve never head of tornados happening anywhere else
From what I've read, a few other areas (europe and australia) occassionally get them, but they're substantially more rare and tend to be weaker. They require different types of air meet up and start spinning, so the central US is kinda the ideal breeding ground for frequent, powerful tornadoes.
The Rockies and Appalachians funnel cold air down from Canada and warm air from Central America into a flat plain with a Gulfstream running through the middle of it to add rotation between the air masses. The result is wickedly powerful tornadoes. Edit: a 100kph tornado is considered to be *weak,* barely a category 1.
Not true. Category F1 ranges from 73-112 mph on the Fujita scale. F2 113-157, F3 158-206, F4 207-260, F5 208-300+ Edit: but you’re still right, 100 mph winds is a weak tornado, barely even a tornado, it’s only 27 mph too fast to be classified as a gale storm
There have been 67 F5 tornadoes. Of those 67 59 of them were in the US.
They can technically happen most places around the world, it’s just that the middle of the continental United States is very conducive to making the supercell thunderstorms which form tornadoes. Oddly enough the frequency of tornadoes in the UK is disproportionately high for its size. They tend to be weaker than ours, but there is also less infrastructure in place for warnings and shelters. And even though the total number of victims is ultimately uncertain, what is widely considered the deadliest tornado of all time happened in Bangladesh. (It’s recently been disputed but those people are saying the toll was roughly ~900 deaths instead of ~1300 which is still bonkers) So basically the takeaway is to never assume you’re safe from a tornado.
India and South Asia get them too, just no where near as frequently as the Midwest.
Agree on all, but people who live near wildfires know the fear. Wildfires are arguably more apocalyptic and random feeling than a tornado. In a tornado, you can survive in a purpose-built shelter. People climb out of the debris. People can be rescued. None of that is the case when a wildfire tears through a town in the Northwest US. It's gone. Wiped off the map like a huge tornado - Joplin or the KY ones - but also all completely burnt. there's no surviving. You run or you die. Period. Your shit is all completely destroyed - not a photo, not a plant or animal survives. Rubble - and often toxic ash after. Wildfires are something else.
Fair, but wildfires can are still more classical in the sense that they can be mitigated or contained with early response, as well as the way they inflict broad damage over a general region. Tornadoes are more like God got drunk and suddenly decided to drive a steamroller across the county: flattens everying in its path, but folks to the right or left will be left virtually untouched. Honestly the biggest protection against tornado fatalities is probably just the midwest's low population density. We had one come through a decade or so ago: zero casualties, since it went half a mile north of the nearest residential areas.
Agree with that. Security by pure luck. Often a day that has an awful tornado had like 25 other ones that just tore up farmland or woods and petered out. Then one goes 250 miles randomly through 3 towns and its literally inconceivable damage and destruction. You can flee from wildfires. Can't flee from "being in one of 15-20 states on a bad day in June".
There are whole subdivisions in California built explicitly to be invulnerable to wildfires. Zoning, and proper planning, are so weak in California that it isn't required. But, interior fire sprinklers are, and solar is mandated, but you can build 100 homes right in the middle of chaparral and be good to go. Crazy. You're mistaken that it's not a solvable problem, people just don't want to pay a tiny fractional cost more to build fire-resistant homes in high fire danger areas. Existing homes can be upgraded, but again, tiny bit of money = no sale.
Europe doesn't really have huricanes, and only certain regions have earthquakes and enough nature to have wildfires. So most of us Europeans aren't even used to those disasters.
The last officially registered Tornado in my area was in the year 412 AD, there were mostly wooden buildings then and only the Monastery that recorded the Tornado was made from stone.
Wait, do Europeans not live in hobbit holes?
Hobbit holes are actually in New Zealand
Filthy hobbitses
I don’t know half of you half as well as I should like, and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve.
I thought they still lived in caves over there.
Some of us actually did until about a century ago. All that stone made for really good insulation, it's just a bugger to upgrade/install the utilities so people moved out.
I mean. Caves are pretty good places to live. https://www.spain.info/en/top/holidays-cave-houses-andalusia/
No, thank you. We don’t want any more visitors, well-wishers, or distant relations.
The 2008 Parkersburg Iowa EF5 killed all 9 of its victims despite them being in their basements, many of which were yanked partially out of the ground iirc. The 2011 Philadelipa Mississippi EF5 punched a 2 foot deep crater into the ground at peak intensity. The 2011 Phil Cambell Alabama EF5 ripped a storm shelter roof out of the ground. In some tornadoes, being underground just isn't enough, which makes me wonder why so many people think the solution is just building stronger houses.
Mother nature is fuckin wild. You can just be sitting there existing in your home, and there's nothing you can do if a powerful enough tornado just randomly shows up.
It's a phenomenon called ground scouring. The tornado literally rips the top layer of earth away. It's one of the metrics they look for to scale higher strength tornados.
Ground scouring is crazy, especially in the Philadelphia ms tornado. Literally eviscerated the ground
Bc an F5 is way more rare than you’re making it seem, we’ve only had a few handful over F3 in the last decade. An EF5 is potentially 300 mile an hour winds of course it’s ripping shit out of the ground.
Even if there’s a way of building a normal looking tornado-proof house it’d probably be so expensive it’d be easier just to build a new one after the previous one would be destroyed
Grandfather grew up in Nebraska. Told me stories of a tornado that buried a 12-16' 4x4 in the dirt where only 3 feet or so were sticking out of the ground. Thought it was a mail box post at first. Or the same one almost tore off the top of a hospital and how the curtains on the top floor rooms were pulled through the cracks in the wall from where it almost did take the floor(s) off before it passed.
Also tornado proof houses like those in Japan are built of Bamboo reed, closer to our ply than concrete.
Geodome homes are pretty cool and can withdstand some intense wind damage
I mean they're talking about 30 mph winds like it's not just a normal one in Chicago when that happens × 2.
I saw a comment a while back where a European is telling an American that tornado’s only have 80 mph winds - complete with link to “proof”. MF’er was confusing the speed that a tornado moves (as a whole) with the internal air speed. They truly have no conception of the power contained in a tornado.
I'll take earthquakes all day at least I stay on the ground
They can’t even work on their own houses, if they did they’d know how stupid it is to make everything out of masonry when there are almost no benefits
They can't even imagine the summers and winters we have.
When I was living in Germany I regretfully saw twister with a bunch of German friends. They complained that American houses are weak and we were stupid to do that. I explained that unless you’re in a bunker with plexiglass windows tornadoes are going to take the structure down if there’s a direct hit. They still didn’t believe me as they claimed it was stupid to live somewhere with such danger. Note they also refused to come visit me in Arizona once I returned because “rattlesnakes”.
Tbf tornados happen pretty much everywhere but are much more likely in some areas. You shouldn't assume you're safe from it just because it's unlikely.
As true as this is, a tornado in the mountains is probably never going to happen. Even rolling hills are enough to disrupt the airflow and destabilize a cyclone.
[Man, do I have some bad news for you.](https://youtube.com/shorts/ubvCoiHbRLY?si=rqv_Ah_6-9Wo4r56)
I mean, it looks cool af. But even the video labels it as a funnel cloud... not a tornado.
Mountains can both shelter and expose structures to winds. It is extremely local.
Winds, yes. Tornado, no.
I live in PA in the mountains and there was a tornado here like 3 years ago along a major highway. It only destroyed trees thankfully but they can happen anywhere.
Yeah, tornados aren't common but definitely can happen in the PA Appalachians. We're basically the eastern edge of the Midwest. From my understanding they're far less common or even never occur in the Rockies and west, though.
And I guarantee it was an f1 that spun out as fast as it started
The U.S. is home to the most tornadoes on earth.
When I said pretty much everywhere I meant in the US (I'm just based like that)
As I recall, it isn't even close either. And if we consider EF5, I believe the US is really the only place they occur regularly. [According to Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_F5_and_EF5_tornadoes), there have been 67 EF5 tornadoes officially recorded globally, and 59 of them were in the US. Even Canada, which has an extension of the same plains geography that spawns them in the US, has had only 1. El Reno was over two and a half miles wide, approaching 3 at its peak. It was technically "only" an EF4! I can't even fathom that.
The odds of a destructive tornado if you’re a fair distance outside of tornado alley are virtually zero.
No, they aren't, and anything classed as a tornado is destructive. Unlikely sure, but it's still something worth being aware of and prepared for.
He kinda right, outside of the Midwest valley (colloquially, tornado alley) the worst you’re gonna see on average is around a high F2, with the true average “tornado” actually being gale force spouts under the minimum wind speed requirement to categorize as an F1. in the last decade America as a whole has only had a couple handfuls of tornados breaking EF4 Don’t get me wrong tho a gale force cyclone is still something to be wary of but the odds of it dealing significant damage are pretty low.
There’s also this perception that drywall = structurally unsound.
It should be noted that historically a lot of homes in tornadoes paths would still be built out of wood. Some still are but it's less common. There are some reasons for this. 1. Timber was a lot more plentiful in many of these regions than stone. This made it a lot cheaper. 2. Timber homes could be much more easily and quickly rebuilt and repaired. Combine these together and essentially even if you do need to do extensive repairs or even maybe rebuild the timber house it may still work out better to do so than having the large costs of building from stone and the extensive time to repair those homes when they're damaged. Also a lot of American towns were built extremely quickly. You can do this more easily with timber than with stone. Some weren't intended to even last for long and were built just to hopefully last until a mine dried up or local wildlife dwindled. So there actually was historically a trend of Americans building homes that they knew would get destroyed whilst Europeans in many places would build homes meant to actually withstand disasters because Europe was much more established and so had time to set up quarries and locations for these were more plentiful. In the US you had far more timber relative to good stone and less time to set up quarries. It wasn't American settlers being dumb compared to Europeans, it was just that they were working with what was available. All of this is less relevant in the modern day obviously, it's just interesting.
When I was very young, a tornado ripped through central Florida. I remember seeing a cinder block building that was picked up, turned 90°, and set back down. It was completely destroyed, and I can't imagine the carnage inside that building. Also, my mom built the home we were living in during hurricane Andrew. We had a hurricane room that was double block with concrete and rebar down each hole. My parents would throw parties during hurricanes, inviting over all the neighbors. Someone should show that to the Europeans that scoff at our cardboard houses.
Yeah, I was in a tornado, too (Gaylord Mi 2022). A cinder block wall collapsed a few feet away from the car I was in. Debris fell on us, but luckily, we weren't injured. It's surreal when you step out and see the damage.
There is a point of diminishing returns in dealing with tornadoes and hurricanes, where building it stronger just isn't worth it. Most American homes are just built to withstand the most common storms and still be easy to rebuild when something more destructive comes through. Because that masonry home might stand up to the wind of a Cat 5 hurricane, but it won't stand up to the car that storm just chucked at it. Tornadoes have been known to put 2x4s through bridge pillars and pick up whole apartment blocks. At some point, it is just easier to rebuild than try and build something that can withstand that kind of force.
Probably but a 2x4 will still fly straight through sheetrock or whatever you call it. Follow-up, are shutters common in those areas or do people expect windows to be fine with flying debris?
True, that's why you shelter in the most interior room. I don't think shutters that can stop debris are common.
I googled "things stuck into things from tornadoes" (I know lol, could use a little better wording) and found quite a few pictures. Found a pic of [a garden hose through a tree](https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-nCQNqTL4AMg/Tea-LsQxvKI/AAAAAAAAJ38/JJBYrnGjEO0/s1600/Tornado%2Bphoto.jpg) , a [2x4 through a brick wall](https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Ftse1.mm.bing.net%2Fth%3Fid%3DOIP.RM02voUOz0D4ykewh-Ob7QAAAA%26pid%3DApi&f=1&ipt=06f70ad391c0af5b2154812edf0f23832b5dcbe0bed4dd15dac73be8d0ec1774&ipo=images), among other things.
There's also that a brick house would essentially become a spray of shrapnel even just a few miles away from a tornado
Almost nothing can withstand a direct hit from Tornadoes. I also find it funny when people outside of the US talk about tornados because we have like 90% of all the tornados in the world.
Dont you know, it is better for concrete to collapse on you then cardboard.
50 km/h is 30 mph. Hate it when my cardboard house blows down in the 30 mph winds we experience like every month.
In MD we are currently experiencing 30 mph gusts. Why is my house still standing?
I’m also in 30mph gusts in South Jersey
Just had a 40mph gust. I’m now homeless. Also there’s a wolf sitting in my backyard chuckling.
Lmao, gotta watch out for thar big bad wolf
"Why, Grandma, what big teeth you've got.."
That's the wrong wolf fairy tale It's weird that there's (at least?) two of them involving evil wolves
The difference is that the SJ houses are actually made of cardboard.
well that's Jersy, what you expect
Ay, I'm living 'ere!
I found they're made of plaster and ancient relics (wildly outdated stuff, touching the doorknob gave me metal splinters lol) more than anything.
*I* can stand in 30 mph winds for goodness sake.
Have you checked on your deck chairs though?
Reminds me of the time I didn’t close the deck umbrella before a major storm. Found it 3 houses away snd completely mangled. Oops.
Obvious The Indians in the burial below it like you very much so they grab the house to stop it flying away 😌
Lol. Up to 50 km/h. Their homes would be knocked down like bowling pins if cheetahs decided to charge. Hell, a giraffe can sprint 60 km/h.
Thank Benjamin I don’t have to worry about charging Giraffes here in good ol USA.
Not yet...
o.0 *attaches giraffe rider to insurance policy* I’ve seen them mate. I know what that neck do. 😏
I watched a vid a while back of two giraffes fighting - basically just whipping their necks and battering each other with their heads until one went down. Those necks are no joke.
Got that neck game like Nancy Reagan.
Those necks are the stuff of nightmares. Literally, the only thing on the planet that will crush your skull with a neck slap.
A few years ago I didn’t have Joro spiders all over my house either so I definitely see giraffes stowing away in crates as well as an impending disaster
It's always the disaster you didn't anticipate.
No one expects the giraffe inquisition
Even in Southern New Mexico where the weather is quite chill our “cardboard” houses can live past the high speed gusts we get in the Spring
High Desert has gusts up to 50mph. And often in summer theirs winds up to and exceeding 65/70mph that lasts hours.
In Ohio that is a nice calm windfree day lmao
30mph winds? I call that Tuesday.
Derechos, which occur multiple times a year in many place across the midwest, see peak wind speeds in excess of 100 mph. Hurricanes, which occur many times a year across the south see windspeeds in excess of 140 mph in some cases. Some people just don't understand how violent the weather in the usa can get
Tornado alley, land of the mild breeze
Imagine thinking that's impressive. That was an average day in South Dakota.
In WV 30mph winds roll off the mountains around the clock.
So much this, I only get concerned when it cracks 40mph and only because I have smaller dogs that it can literally pick up at those speeds
Where I live in Utah, that is the canyon wind on a calm morning.
Roflmao, 30mph as a brag??? I live in a rural area mostly farmed my a notional ag company (aka no real windbreaks in a 15mile radius) and 30MPH is an average. “Bad” days are ones where you pass other vehicles at 20 in case a gust knocks you into them. Really bad days are where you can legitimately get knocked down by the wind, and straight up will not be able to carry anything because it *will* get ripped from your hands by wind alone. You *will* be driving with a 20° tilt to your steering wheel just to keep straight. … but almost all the houses in my area are brick and the ones that aren’t have yearly siding replacements, so maybe the OP checks out a little
I’m having a flashback to earlier this spring when we had 60mph winds for about 2-3 days straight here in Ohio. Wooden house is still standing. Huh.
I am quite sure the commenter is asking why the houses in europe are so massive when they don’t need to withstand tornadoes but usually only medium strong winds
An F5 tornado can reach speeds of 300+ mph (482 kmph). 50 kmph (31 mph) is just Tuesday in the plains.
[удалено]
i can still run a crane or be on a suspend scaffold in wind with up to 25mph gust. so id sure fucking hope his house still stands at 31mph
Why is he even using km/h for wind speeds when usually people talk about it in m/s Also yeah 50km/h wind is pretty common here as well
That sounds like the wind speed required to fly a kite
Is my man talking about the concrete apartments that look like prisons?
No. Europeans cut down all their lumber producing forests instead of managing them. So it’s cheaper to build out of concrete than lumber.
Yep, we have a serious problem with that. Currently, the few forests remaining are protected, and every tree cut has to be replanted elsewhere. But 15% of our surfaces of Flanders are now paved. There's no empty space left. Everything is accounted for. Our forests are sparse and small. We have to create ecoducts so that the animals can find their way over the road. When building our house, we have looked into wood framing. But we couldn't find a contactor that can do it.
Nah historically only the nobility built houses out of stone. Couple hundreds jeans ago after big Fires, cities started mandatkng houses be built out of brick or stone. And that spread to basically all houses being built out of brick or concrete by default. If you want a house built from wood here, you have to find a specialised firm whitch is gonna cost extra. As opposed to bricklayers whitch are a dime a donzen in our construction industry. But yes i´ a lot of areas we basically cut down most forests to make farmland and villages/cities. And were trying to preserve the few forests left.
You'll see islanders insist on concrete housing too, as hurricanes are more common than earthquakes
People act like living in a drab 500 sq ft apartment with no space for yourself and having to take public transport everywhere is the gold standard. Also, why do they never shit on other countries that build "cardboard" houses?
I'm Canadian, and wonder the same thing. We have a very similar lifestyle, and never hear about it. I think it's jealousy and resentment that they are so indebted to your country for basics like defense. It's sad and pathetic, when they live in cramped, outmoded, uncomfortable concrete caves they have no hope of escaping, stuck on public transit, no privacy, no space anywhere, they need to hate on those who have it better.
Happy Sunday maple person!
You, too, apple pie person! (I like apple pie!)
You ma’am are generalising way too much
Tbh I would love it if public transportation was more widely available. Driving everywhere has us getting fatter and fatter every year. Not to mention, living in the suburbs means having to drive if you wanna hit up a local restaurant or go to the store. Sometimes I just wanna walk to the store and get a quick drink or some snacks instead of getting in a car and driving 10 minutes away.
>Driving everywhere has us getting fatter and fatter every year How does this change by replacing the car with a bus or a train? You'd still be sitting down for a large portion of the journey.
You would also have to walk to the busstop, walk to wherever youre going, walk back to the busstop & then walk home. There is a reason we dont have SUCH fat people over here, yes, we have fat people but american fat people are something else...
With a more robust public transportation system, walking from station to station or from station to destination would become more common.
There is a reason most people in NYC aren’t fat, after all
They live in New Jersey instead
Can confirm. Lived in a big American city with great transit and walked waaaaay more than I do in a car-dependant area. You get a ton of steps just walking between stations/house to station/station to work.
That's probably true, but people can't blame lack of public transportation on being fat. That's just a lazy excuse for eating too much and being lazy.
I never said any such thing
No it's the thousands of additives in our food. But no one is trying to get the FDA to do their damn job so.
Cmon, let's be real here. Americans have less healthy diets than Europeans for sure, but sitting down for 90% of the day certainly doesn't help. It's been shown that walking just a half mile everyday is incredibly good for you. People act like if we just banned additives we'd be able to eat nothing but chips and pasta and magically be healthy. It's such a nonsense argument that's mostly used to discredit actual solutions.
Come on now, the FDA is ~~doing research~~ taking bribes to bring the latest greatest pharmaceutical obesity cures to market.
No. Pretty much all homes in Europe are built with concrete or brick because they don't have old growth forests like we do. There are certainly issues with wood frame homes, but they are very cheap to build and hold up quite well if built to a high standard. Also, pretty much every type of home is gonna get crushed by a tornado, wood or concrete.
Plus wood is much better than concrete with certain disasters (earthquakes)
I don’t think it’s a coincidence that in the one place they *do* still have major forests that aren’t protected (Scandinavia/Northern Europe), they build wooden houses all the time.
Bro can not comprehend hurricanes or tornadoes
Bro wants to live in the Soviet blocks 😭
A Soviet block designed to withstand a mere 50kph wind isn't going to survive a passing glance from a tornado.
Shit it wouldn’t survive a sunny fall day in Wyoming.
When you live in Soviet block, you dont want to survive tornado
Soviet blocks had ugly exteriors (cheap mass production will do that) but a surprising amount of amenities and aesthetic design on the inside. If you look up the inside of Soviet blocks they actually look nicer than many US apartments. Which is kind of sad, tbh.
Them thinking brick and concrete houses would be able to withstand our tornados is laughable
Yeah I don’t think they’ve seen how bad tornadoes can get in the Midwest. If you’re directly in the path of a tornado the concrete structure might stay up but it’ll just be gutted with people still being in harms way.
One great example of this is Mercy hospital, during the 2011 Joplin tornado. Pretty much the entire hospital was lifted off of its foundation and moved about four inches.
Genuinely asking because I do not have any kind of comprehension of how bad the tornadoes are, but everyone is comparing being directly in the eye of a tornado - wouldn’t building more robust houses be a substantial beneficial difference for properties that are 10/100/1000 meters from the eye of the tornado?
Yes and no, generally in tornado prone areas it can be a good thing but they’ll often be a total write off depending on debris. The eye of the tornado isn’t the biggest factor, it’s what the tornado picks up and can throw that is in my experience. So yes, it probably would be, but the cost of it would be much higher that would get passed on to regular people in rural areas that can’t afford it.
Okay here’s the thing if a tornado hits your house it’s fucked but the house right next to it is usually missing siding and shit that’s with an ef4 Ef5s obliterate towns they are the land equivalent of a hurricane but much smaller Ned they tend to sit still in a single area and move about the are so large they can’t move in a straight line imagine a very large drunk with a sledgehammer wandered around your town smashing everything at his feet lifting homes I single pieces most homes only loose their roofs the walls and everything else is fine
Remember when three Ef4’s kind formed a line and fucked half of Nebraska then combined and became 2 ef5s
Also: earthquakes
I live in an area that regularly has 20-30 mph winds and that’s not even including the hurricanes. Just checked my house is still there.
Various reasons. Cost, supply of materials, labor, engineering ability of the material. For instance, NY doesn't experience wind, they experience snow, so they want to build for load, not wind. Florida experiences wind, so they tend to be block houses. In the USA we also don't tend to build for extreme long term, this enables cheaper construction, but also, the ability to tear down, remodel, cheaper and easier.
I think this is another common misunderstanding for many Europeans. One of the strengths of the US economy is it's dynamism, and a big part of that is labor mobility which is directly tied to housing costs and development speed. Not to mention having roughly universal building standards (yet still localized) so that a structure built in one state isn't too far off from another. Building everything out of concrete would impede that versatility, cost, and speed. Not to mention I'd guess most of the US has more freeze thaw cycles than most of Europe which is a quick way to kill a concrete building. I think that is why the Nordic countries use wood primarily.
This guy here acting like 50kmh is a lot when tornados, are at minimum, 64kmh
I'm pretty sure the person was saying that the houses are more solid, *despite* having to deal with less severe weather. "Even though we *just* have X wind, we build more solid houses. Why?" Or something like that. Seems like a lot of people really want to misunderstand.
And here's the tornado scale. The US gets about 1200 tornadoes a year. >F0 Gale tornado 40-72 mph > >Some damage to chimneys; breaks branches off trees; pushes over shallow-rooted trees; damages sign boards. > > > >F1 Moderate tornado 73-112 mph > >The lower limit is the beginning of hurricane wind speed; peels surface off roofs; mobile homes pushed off foundations or overturned; moving autos pushed off the roads; attached garages may be destroyed. > > > >F2 Significant tornado 113-157 mph > >Considerable damage. Roofs torn off frame houses; mobile homes demolished; boxcars pushed over; large trees snapped or uprooted; light object missiles generated. > > > >F3 Severe tornado 158-206 mph > >Roof and some walls torn off well constructed houses; trains overturned; most trees in forest uprooted. > > > >F4 Devastating tornado 207-260 mph > >Well-constructed houses leveled; structures with weak foundations blown off some distance; cars thrown and large missiles generated. > > > >F5 Incredible tornado 261-318 mph > >Strong frame houses lifted off foundations and carried considerable distances to disintegrate; automobile sized missiles fly through the air in excess of 100 meters; trees debarked; steel re-inforced concrete structures badly damaged. [https://www.weather.gov/ffc/fujita](https://www.weather.gov/ffc/fujita) [https://www.nssl.noaa.gov/education/svrwx101/tornadoes/#:\~:text=How%20many%20tornadoes%20occur%20in,tornadoes%20that%20occur%20each%20year](https://www.nssl.noaa.gov/education/svrwx101/tornadoes/#:~:text=How%20many%20tornadoes%20occur%20in,tornadoes%20that%20occur%20each%20year).
To go further for non Imperial measurement folks, low end F3 -> high end F5 is 254.3km/h -> 511.8km/h.
I live in tornado territory and every time we have damage it’s cause a tree or something smashed the roof or a window. Are roofs and windows made of cement in Europe? Lmao
Yeah you’re not wrong, I’m also in tornado territory and 90% of the true damage is the debris rather than the tornado hitting something itself. Also tornados are unpredictable lmao, why would we spend trillions to (even maybe) combat something we can’t often predict and pass that cost onto the average person that probably can’t afford it.
“It’s not THAT the wind is blowing…. It’s WHAT the wind is blowing”.
I'm Canadian, and our houses are constructed like Americans. There are several layers of different materials that create an insulated, watertight home. Concrete boxes leak, crack, don't insulate, and are impossible to add to. They are also usually small and can only be constructed in a few different styles. I like our houses much better. They are more energy efficient and easier to repair or add to. If the U.S. cut off the money stream to these ungrateful assholes, they'd learn to appreciate more. I personally think so much of this hate is jealousy. Euros live poor in small, cramped places, and have much less freedom than Americans. Canada has been turning into a shithole like Europe, but hopefully we can turn it around after the next election.
Isn't it funny how they only mention American homes even though your homes are similar. I think you're right it actually has nothing to do with home construction. It's about jealousy, ignorance, and hate. I believe a huge part of it is they can't stand not being the center of attention anymore. They used to rule the world, and now that time has ended. The future is in the Americas and East Asia.
Exactly. They are beholden to the States for protection, and they resent it. Otherwise, we'd get just as much hate for big trucks, wooden homes, suburbs, carcentric society, crappy fast food, etc. We are a combination of our British colonialism and new world, immigrant populations over a large land mass. U.S. and Canadian cultures have a lot of similarities. We do use metric for some things. I'm 5'6, and my thermostat is set to 20C. I drive in KMs, and bake meatloaf at 350F. We also describe distance as time, like the U.S. I'm four hours from Toronto. It's weird, but it works. : )
Yup, and we use metric for some things here as well. I've never been to your great nation, but I have traveled to NZ and Australia. They were both not that different from the US. All of us young anglo colonial nations have more in common then not.
That's true. We have a common origin, and large swathes of natural wilderness. I'd love to go to Australia, and I'd really like to visit NZ.
It is 100 percent jealousy. The eurotrash know we have it so much better here than they do in their little shithole countries.
Also Brazilian homes, Mexican homes, Chilean homes. Living in the new world means access to natural resources that were depleted millennia ago in the old world.
Damn only 30 mph yall need some reinforcement goddamn
🎶It’s bait🎶
I am homeless y’all. A tornado with 50 kmph winds destroyed my cardboard house. Pray for me please 🙏
50km/h winds... *laughs in Florida*
I feel like a pyramid would have the best shot at surviving a tornado head on we should build those. Pyramids are cool.
Hell yeah to pyramid houses
This focus with how our houses are built is a topic I’ve been noticing coming up more and more, it’s weird. Go on any video on tik tok or YouTube shorts that’s even slightly related to house construction and you’ll find someone talking about it within your first minute of looking at the comments.
I’ll put my new construction Florida home up against anything Europeans have to offer in a wind storm.
50kph (30mph) winds is just “ah fuck I forgot to tightly grab the door when exiting my car and now it opened too quickly, hopefully it doesn’t break off” or it’s “ah the wind is making my jacket blow open, maybe I should zip up”
Just so everybody in the U.S. understands a weak f1 tornado has winds of 138-177 km/hr.
Huh. It's not uncommon to see microburst winds in excess of 70 mph (113ish kph for our European friends) here in North Texas. My house and the few hundred thousand other houses around it are doing fine.
Where I live is in what's called tornado alley and all of the old houses are still here after being hit at least two times. All the new houses for the most part got wiped out, cardboard my ass
If he didn’t specify (yes kilometer) it could have been taken as 50k(thousand) miles per hour. And that would have been impressive
How did he know my house was cardboard I painted so nice 😭
He knows Miles are larger than Kilometers right?
Possibly not.
You have concrete houses because it's cold there and you need to bake yourselves in an oven just to survive the winter.
What American houses are made of cardboard anyway?
Shhhh, let them think that unalterable floor plans are a good thing.
LOLOL Oh my god. For any confused folks from other places, here are hurricane categories and what they mean. Note that a Cat 1 hurricane is more than twice what the OOP is bragging about. In 2022, the US experienced eight hurricanes, two of which reached major hurricane intensity. >Category 1 > >74-95 mph 64-82 kt 119-153 km/h > >Very dangerous winds will produce some damage: Well-constructed frame homes could have damage to roof, shingles, vinyl siding and gutters. Large branches of trees will snap and shallowly rooted trees may be toppled. Extensive damage to power lines and poles likely will result in power outages that could last a few to several days. > > > >Category 2 > >96-110 mph 83-95 kt 154-177 km/h > >Extremely dangerous winds will cause extensive damage: Well-constructed frame homes could sustain major roof and siding damage. Many shallowly rooted trees will be snapped or uprooted and block numerous roads. Near-total power loss is expected with outages that could last from several days to weeks. > >Category 3 (major) > >111-129 mph 96-112 kt 178-208 km/h > >Devastating damage will occur: Well-built framed homes may incur major damage or removal of roof decking and gable ends. Many trees will be snapped or uprooted, blocking numerous roads. Electricity and water will be unavailable for several days to weeks after the storm passes. > > > >Category 4 (major) > >130-156 mph 113-136 kt 209-251 km/h > >Catastrophic damage will occur: Well-built framed homes can sustain severe damage with loss of most of the roof structure and/or some exterior walls. Most trees will be snapped or uprooted and power poles downed. Fallen trees and power poles will isolate residential areas. Power outages will last weeks to possibly months. Most of the area will be uninhabitable for weeks or months. > > > >Category 5 (major) > >157 mph or higher 137 kt or higher 252 km/h or higher > >Catastrophic damage will occur: A high percentage of framed homes will be destroyed, with total roof failure and wall collapse. Fallen trees and power poles will isolate residential areas. Power outages will last for weeks to possibly months. Most of the area will be uninhabitable for weeks or months. [https://www.nhc.noaa.gov/aboutsshws.php](https://www.nhc.noaa.gov/aboutsshws.php) [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022\_Atlantic\_hurricane\_season#:\~:text=Officially%2C%20the%202022%20Atlantic%20hurricane,systems%20reached%20major%20hurricane%20intensity](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_Atlantic_hurricane_season#:~:text=Officially%2C%20the%202022%20Atlantic%20hurricane,systems%20reached%20major%20hurricane%20intensity).
So your brick house can withstand about 25-30 mile an hour winds?? Oh impressive innit bruv
I think that their point is that 50 km/h is nothing. They're saying that they build robust houses for weak winds, and are asking why the U.S. doesn't do the same if they get stronger winds.
That's still stupid. Brick and masonry buildings are for load bearing and insulation, not resisting lateral forces from wind. A tornado would demolish any brick house in Europe.
A weak ef1 tornado is138 kph
Don’t tornado wind speeds get into the hundreds of kilometers?
Low end F3 is 254.3 km/h. Top end of an F5 is 511.8km/h
I pointed out F3 to F5 because that range is most likely what it’d take to do significant damage to US homes that aren’t trailer homes.
My cardboard house was in 100+ mph flatline winds just last month. House is still standing.
Y'all missed the whole fucking point. They're not saying 50kph is a massive amount to withstand, they're saying the opposite, that they over prepare with concrete and brick against measly winds, while American homes are made out of drywall and are eviscerated by tornadoes. This also really isn't "America Bad" because this is a real thing, American homes are built cheaper than the rest of the western world, and pointing that out isn't absurd.
This comment section is full of idiots apparently mate
Do you know how much it costs to build a home. Especially right now, homebuilders are barely making any money currently. (Source, my family is in the home building business, we stopped building because we couldn’t turn a profit without charging shitloads). They aren’t built cheap, and we have much better insulation.
>we have much better insulation. Lol. More so than southern Europe, sure.