It is well more than 50 years ago that I heard a few times about when my mother, grandmother and an aunt were taken for a ride in a tornado. I don’t remember the distance they were carried, 300 feet or yards, whatever.
It was during the 1920s in the Midwest. They survived but had some scars to substantiate their claim. The house was destroyed and I remember it was said that they closed the windows before it hit.
Long ago I also heard it said once or twice that if it is imminent that a tornado will strike, to open the doors and windows then take whatever shelter is available. I have never heard this mentioned again.
Not long ago when the tornado went through and devastated Joplin, Mo., I believe it was a hospital that was left standing though all of the windows were blown out. Using our familiar English terms, normal-standard atmospheric pressure is about 14.7 pounds per square inch at sea level and drops some four percent per thousand feet of elevation.
Usually during stormy weather it is less (low pressure area). At the moment a tornado hits, the atmospheric pressure can drop dramatically. Two pounds or more per square inch is not unreasonable.
A little math will demonstrate the dynamics. At a drop of two pounds per square inch and with 144 square inches in a square foot, it would be 288 pounds.
With a window 6 by 4 feet, 24 square feet, it would be 6,912 (288 by 24) pounds of pressure against the window.
With windows and doors closed, there is no way for the inside and outside pressures to quickly equalize and something would have to give. To say that the windows were blown out is correct. They were not blown in. The pressure in the hospital blew out its own windows.
Sometimes light frame houses like many built these days will explode or the roof will ‘blow’ off. It is not necessarily the wind that does it.
Using the above pressure example, a wall of a house 20 by 50 feet (1000 square feet times 288) would have 288,000 pounds of pressure against it. Quite dynamic!
A dentist was once referring to a tool used to clean up the debris after dental work as suction. I engaged him a discussion similar to the following.
If one has a glass containing liquid with a straw standing in it, the liquid in the straw will be the same height as that in the glass. If one sucks on the straw, one gets a mouthful of the liquid and the general thinking is that vacuum did it.
In reality, the higher pressure on the liquid in the glass at the moment pushed it up the straw. Vacuum being nothing. Pressure being something.
Nothing does nothing and something does something. Might as well be correct. Remember, open the doors and windows.
We are again in the hurricane season and whatever else. If the electric grid goes down, no one with a home has anything to complain about. Solar panels with backup batteries and an electronic interface to the grid should have been installed by this late date. Used conservatively, it could supply at least some lights, a refrigerator, a microwave oven, some TV and a little hot water on a day to day basis.
Who needs LIPA?
Besides, it would be paying for itself on a daily basis from day one. If one is lethargic about the matter, one only has oneself to blame. If I owned a house I would fasten the panels with bolts that go completely through the roof with a large washer on the inside.
That way, the wind could not blow them off as it did during Sandy to some that the Village of Mineola had installed.
Maybe they were attached with screws.
Charles Samek
Mineola
