A Little Too Close

The tornadoes last night were a little too close for comfort hitting about 4 miles from Zoe Cottage. No injuries were reported, and the property damage comparatively minimal.  We were very blessed to have been spared the nightmare other Oklahoma communities have experienced with the storms this spring.

Ornery was on his way over to his sister's house to return some tools we had borrowed when the hail first hit. He turned around to come home then realized he had already gone through the worst of it and the storm was headed this way, so he turned back again. While he was there, they stood outside and watched the funnels forming, swirling and starting down before going back up into the clouds.

The hail hit Zoe Cottage a couple times, mostly pea to dime size, but some bits were golf ball sized as well. I don't think we have any damage but I haven't really checked, either.  The sirens went off twice before Ornery got home. We don't have a TV to watch the weather unfold, so I used the old "observe it from the porch" method of gauging whether to hunker down in the utility room or not.  About the time I was ready to turn on a radio, my SIL called to say a tornado had touched down just a few miles from us.  By then the sirens had already turned off and I was back to reading my book.

The forecast is for another three+ inches of rain for our area in the next 24 hours, which will cause an equally dangerous situation since the ground is saturated and the area creeks and rivers are swollen.  There is a flood warning in effect through Saturday.  The Cottage is situated at a high point in our neighborhood and well sloped so I don't anticipate a flooding problem here, but certainly travel along some roads will be tricky.  Unfortunately with the heat we are experiencing, the storms coming in may also be severe--not something I am looking forward to!

The discussions this morning over coffee revolved around storm shelters, safe rooms and so forth.  Ornery said we could make our utility into a safe room relatively easily if we wanted to. Elizabeth and I discussed basements (which are pretty rare here) and other options, but decided that we'd rather take our chances with the storm than die from drowning because we couldn't get out of a flooded below-ground shelter.

I read a string of blog comments after the Moore tornadoes in which there was much uproar about the lack of safe rooms and basements here when we have such a history of twisters. One man said the reason there are not many basements here is because the frost line is high enough the foundations are shallower than in places up north.  Perhaps that is one of the reasons, but at least in this part of the state the two most prevalent reasons for not having a basement are the soil (clay) and the water table.

Every basement in Oklahoma I have ever been in had mold problems. The clay soil holds the moisture in and makes keeping them dry almost impossible. I understand there are moisture barriers that can be applied, but I have never been in one that had the more advanced shields.  The clay also moves a LOT over the course of a few decades. Each time it gets wet then dries out (which is inevitable when the weather in the summer hits the triple digits for weeks at a time) the clay expands and contracts causing cracks in the cement.

The neighbor next door to 507 has 66 piers in his house, most of them interior.  I can't imagine his house would even be standing if it was over a basement!  He said the neighborhood is built on 27 feet of clay before bedrock, so no matter how deep the foundations were dug it seems there would be shifting since I can't imagine a builder of a 1300 sq. ft. house going 27 feet down for the foundation!

I am not a geologist or an architectural engineer, but it seems to me that clay would not make for a very friendly environment for a basement. That leaves safe rooms, which need excessive reinforcement to withstand EF5 tornadoes such as the one that hit Moore.  Elizabeth told me she heard they were going to begin mandating that new homes be built with a safe room inside, but that doesn't help the people who aren't buying a new home.

I hope to never have the experience of seeing a tornado up-close and personal, but I won't live in fear every time the skies cloud over, either. Either it's my time to go or not.