This year’s storm season has been rather explosive. In the past few days alone, more than 35 million Americans from Texas to Wisconsin have been hit by both tornado warnings and actual tornadoes. If you didn’t get hit by a tornado, there’s also been more than enough rain to cause destructive and hazardous flooding. I’ve been visiting my local storm shelter so much that I’m getting tired. I’ve even been caught in a car when the tornado sirens blared.
The midwestern storm season has been fierce. The National Weather Service in La Crosse, Wisconsin, issued 26 tornado warnings on April 17. The station says that’s the most tornado warnings it’s issued in a single day since the office was built in 1995. That storm produced 10 recorded tornadoes on that day, marking the area’s largest April tornado outbreak. A total of 20 tornadoes hit Wisconsin last week, four of which were in the southeastern part of the state.
Illinois has been hammered by storms worse than anyone this year. NBC 5 Chicago reports that Illinois has logged over 300 storm reports this year, including 115 reports of hail and 59 tornadoes. That report was written on April 11, before an additional 29 tornadoes touched down in Illinois on April 17 alone. Many Illinois residents who have thankfully dodged these tornadoes instead have to deal with flooding. I’m local to the areas covered in this CBS Chicago report below (click here if you cannot see it):
Yesterday, a bunch of reports indicated that Rivian’s plant in Normal, Illinois, had been hit by an EF1 tornado during the April 17 outbreak. Specifically, a parts storage area for the Rivian R2 production was damaged. The tornado that struck the plant was on a path that was up to 2,400 feet wide and produced winds up to 110 mph. It traveled 10.3 miles, going right through the heart of Normal. Another EF1 struck Normal’s sister city of Bloomington.
Thankfully, Rivian reported zero injuries, and while Rivian had to stop operations for the R2, that part of the plant is expected to come back online this week.
While awful, this year’s tornado season hasn’t toppled the Super Outbreak of 2011, when some 367 tornadoes spawned between April 25 and April 28, with 223 of those tornadoes occurring during a 24-hour period on April 27 alone. The 2011 storm season was the same one that produced the tragic EF5 tornado that devastated Joplin, Missouri, on May 22.
Tornado Safety
Storm safety is important, no matter the size of the outbreak. Tornadoes don’t just bring damaging wind, but also debris that flies through the air so fast that it could pierce through buildings. Tornadoes can and do level homes, and your car, even if it’s a pickup truck, can get tossed like a toy. Tornadoes will even derail trains. Look no further than this video from the early days of YouTube (click here if you don’t see the video):
The National Weather Service generally recommends responding to a tornado by getting as low as you can. If you’re in the Midwest, there’s a chance you have a basement, so go there.
In lieu of a basement, get to the lowest floor of your property, stay away from windows, and put as many walls between you and the outside as possible. Go to a small room like a closet, bathroom, or hallway. Don’t bother opening windows because that actually won’t help the structure. If you have time, cover yourself with a heavy table, blankets, or something else to protect you from debris.
If you’re in a tent, camper, or a mobile home, get out and find a sturdy structure. If you’re already in a car, it’s daytime, there’s no traffic, and you can see a distant tornado, drive away from the tornado at a 90-degree angle. Ideally, find shelter, and that shelter should not be an underpass. If you’re in a car and it’s nighttime or you can’t see the tornado, find the closest shelter. Even going into a ditch is better than staying in your car.
Many Americans who live in “Tornado Alley,” the loosely defined region of the central plains encompassing Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, South Dakota, and Texas, are used to performing tornado drills, having proper storm shelters, and being prepared.
Illinois Has Been Wild
That’s not really the case up here in northeastern Illinois. Many of us haven’t seen a tornado for several decades. Indeed, while I have experienced several tornado warnings and have even seen my share of funnel clouds, I have only seen a single tornado on the ground in my entire life. When I was a teenager, there was even a bit of an urban legend that circulated in the local area. The speculation was that we don’t get tornadoes because we’re too close to Lake Michigan. Another story I’ve heard is that Chicago doesn’t get tornadoes because of all of the skyscrapers and the lake.
Taking a year and a half of Meteorology in college was eye-opening. A lot of that class was awesome, like getting taught how to predict the weather by hand. But then there was the history of tornadoes in Illinois. One of the charts that we were introduced to was produced by the Midwestern Regional Climate Center. At the time, the chart displayed the track of every reported tornado from 1950 to 2012. Nowadays, it goes as far as 2024. The chart alone dispels so many myths.
If you set the chart to display the tracks of F/EF 1 to F/EF 5 tornadoes, you’ll see that Illinois’ largest northern cities, including Chicago, Evanston, and Waukegan, have all been hit by tornadoes right there along the lake. A couple of those tornadoes were even F4s in decades past. Some of the tornado tracks even reveal that some tornadoes went right into Lake Michigan.
If you expand the list to include F/EF 0 tornadoes, you’ll see that most towns and cities in Illinois have been hit by a tornado at least once.
Back in 2021, I even drove my 2002 Nova Bus RTS-06 in the trail of the infamous EF3 tornado that struck Naperville on June 20. That tornado was the first and only tornado I have seen in person, and I didn’t even realize I was looking at and technically chasing a tornado until my bus went through the tornado’s debris field.
Yet, throughout my entire life, I have witnessed so many Illinoisans ignore tornado warnings and sirens.
It’s one thing when people stand outside to try to film the tornado. Look, I live in the Midwest, some of us try to crack open a beer and watch a tornado for fun. Even I’m guilty of that. But I’ve seen so many people just ignore the warning entirely and keep on playing video games, driving, watching TV, or working. Many of the companies I’ve worked for here in Illinois had no policy on what to do during a tornado. It’s just not something people worry about.
Some municipalities here in Illinois are trying something a bit different to get residents’ attention. Instead of just firing tornado sirens for tornado warnings, they’ll also blow the sirens when a storm is “tornado possible,” from NBC 5 Chicago:
According to the NBC 5 Storm Team, while tornado sirens are sounded when there is a warning issued, either because a tornado is on the ground or because rotation has been detected within a thunderstorm, some municipalities will sound sirens when there is a threat of a tornado as well.
Several of the NWS alerts, including one for McHenry, Lake, Kane and DeKalb counties, were tagged as “tornado possible” storms, meaning that while there wasn’t strong enough rotation to issue a warning, there was a possibility that the storms could spin up a tornado quickly.
Therefore, the sirens were sounded to alert residents to that possibility.
I’m Getting Used To Being In A Storm Shelter
In practice, this has more or less meant that this year, I’ve heard a tornado siren at the beginning of every severe thunderstorm. I am a resident of McHenry County, and the sirens have gotten a lot of exercise each year.
The quirk is that the sirens that blow for a “tornado possible” storm are the same ones that sound for an actual tornado. Also, I’ve noticed that I do not always get a notification on my phone when a tornado warning is in effect. I’m left Googling if the siren is for a real tornado warning, which would eat up valuable time in a real emergency. So, I just treat all sirens as if a tornado is on its way.
This, admittedly, has gotten a little tiring. I have a whole system in place for tornado response. I grab my Green Cheeked Conures and place them in their travel backpack.
Then, I grab the small fireproof safe that has all of my car titles and keys in it. Finally, I nab some water and first aid before running for the lowest level of my apartment complex. Part of why I grab titles and keys is because, in the event that a tornado plows through my apartment but not through my cars, I don’t want to imagine the nightmare of having to replace 20 sets of titles and keys. Especially since some of my cars have modern security systems.
For the past eight years that I’ve been living here, I’ve usually chosen to stay in the hallway. But I am concerned that, in a truly strong tornado, this building isn’t going to do much. There’s no basement, no concrete stairwells, and even giant windows in the sizable hallways.
This year, I’ve learned that there is a storm shelter in the community center in my neighborhood. The catch is that the shelter is about a one-minute drive from the apartment, or a two-minute run. But it is a real storm shelter. I discovered it when, one night earlier this spring, I found myself in the Autopian’s Nissan Murano CrossCabriolet with the tornado sirens on full blast.
The fascinating thing was that I was the only person taking cover. I watched my neighbors continue to watch TV, arrive home from work, cook, and just live out their lives. It seemed like I was the only one hearing a tornado siren. Even in the community center, there were people lifting weights and running on treadmills without a care in the world. My birds and I were the only ones in the shelter.
The “tornado possible” sirens don’t appear to have made a difference. Even when I decide to hunker down in the lowest floor of my apartment building, I’m the only one doing it. We got a real tornado warning siren on April 17, and I did my normal routine, this time with my wife. A neighbor returning home from work even looked at me like I was crazy. Are the tornado sirens all in my head or something? Why aren’t people reacting? Am I overreacting?
But I feel myself getting worn out. I don’t plan on ignoring the sirens anytime soon, but the process of upending everything and hiding for 15 minutes is getting old. Even if I treat the “tornado possible” sirens as more of an audible Tornado Watch and don’t act, it’s still tiring. There’s a lot of energy to be spent worrying about losing everything to a tornado. There’s an emotional toll to worrying about whether my birds and my wife will be okay.
Real Life Isn’t Twisters, Be Careful!
I know this story is really only tangentially related to cars, but it’s one of those weird situations where an Autopian writer is being directly impacted by something outside of the usual. Something that I’m sure a lot of our readers in the Midwest are also dealing with.
The next time a tornado warning is issued in your area, remember that your car is a terrible shelter. A tornado can toss it, and that can be a fatal event. Likewise, running from a tornado in your car works until it doesn’t. Tornadoes are not concerned with downed trees, traffic, or really any other obstacle. Yep, the tornado will have no issues crossing a river, a lake, or a city. So, above all else, find sturdy shelter.
Also, with lakes and rivers currently busting their banks, remember, turn around, don’t drown. It doesn’t take a lot of water to wash your vehicle off a road. Good luck, everyone, and stay safe. I hope to see more people in the storm shelter next time.
Top graphic image:
Chicagoland resident here as well, and it is WILD how intense our weather has been the past few years. I’ve lost sections of fence and large limbs multiple times in the past year alone.
That’s insanely stupid and absolutely going to get someone killed. They already blow the tornado sirens too often, to the point where people ignore them. Sirens aren’t for getting people’s attention, it’s for warning them that there is immediate danger. Tornado warnings are for getting people’s attention.
That said, I will admit to having sat on my screened in porch last summer while the tornado sirens went off. I could see on the radar that the bad stuff was actually south of me and since the porch faces south I thought I might get a nice show. No dice though.
My thought as well. “People aren’t taking the sirens seriously. I know, we’ll activate them more often!”
I’ve seen something very similar happen ever since the local TV station started declaring Weather Alert Day anytime any part of the viewing area might have a chance of seeing severe weather that day. People in unaffected areas see the event as a missed forecast, and start ignoring the weather.
I visited a site in Kansas last week, and part of their safety instruction involved noting the location of their storm shelter. First time I’ve ever encountered that!
Crazy! I grew up in a small town in Illinois west of Peoria…Galesburg. I will never forget the time I was driving back from college (University of Illinois) heading west on 74. I look left and there is a tornado going east, parallel to 74 in a plowed field. Illinois always had a lot of tornadoes but this year seems excessive.
Ooh, I had pretty much the same experience in nearly the same place! I didn’t see the tornado at first, I saw a white box bouncing across the field up ahead. Then I realized it was a dryer (or maybe a washer). Then I saw the tornado. Oof.
Having watched and studied the educational films Twister and Twisters I’m fully prepared to survive tornados.
The best tornado shelter is a bright red 1996 Dodge Ram as far as I’m concerned
As a note, I did a lot of research on tornado shelters back 15 years ago or so. Two things define what I like in a shelter.
When I was driving through Huntsville on April 27, 2011, I saw the vents of several below ground tornado shelters gushing water out of them. There was a lot of flooding, and the water had risen in several to the point that they were completely full of water.
So, I researched above ground shelters. Joplin, MO got hit by an EF5. 6 above ground shelters took direct hits. Not all were built to the highest standards. Even so, 5 of the 6 had survivors in them that had minor to no injuries. The 1 that did not was outside and the residents of the house did not go to the shelter. Unfortunately, they did not survive.
My conclusion was
A shelter in the backyard is worthless if you decide to risk staying indoors during a storm instead of risk getting hit by lightning to sit in a damp box.
What I did was a steel box bolted to the garage floor. Cost wasn’t insane, although it did take about 2 months to make. I lost use of a bay of the garage, but this shelter can take a car being dropped on it from 30 feet in the air.
I’ve since moved. If I decided to put in a shelter, I would gut my walk in closet, re-frame it to be about 3 times as strong and replace the drywall with bullet “proof” panels that look like drywall and finish it up with a storm rated door. The result would be a closet that I would use for a shelter anyway being strong enough for a tornado.
The reasoning is that I want something easy and quick to get into. Better a good enough shelter that I can get into within a minute than a great one that I won’t go to because it’s raining.
As a weather-nerd, I highly recommend the WeatherWise Radar app (and website). There are paid subscriptions, however the free version is all you really need. It is a professional-level radar where you can view:
It also layers in all NWS bulletins & alerts, including 3-day outlooks from the NWS storm prediction center.
Also, I highly highly recommend the Ryan Hall youtube channel, particularly his live streams during severe weather outbreaks. If there’s a storm capable of producing tornadoes, it’s much better to know about it when it’s an hour west of you and not when sirens in your area go off (if they do).
Weatherwise is OK, but it’s better for tracking storm chasers than storms. It’s data and warning notifications frequently lag behind real time.
The best weather software that’s as close to realtime as you can get without owning your own radar won’t be found on a smart phone – it’s Gibson Ridge’s GRLevel3, which is a one-time purchase with no features locked behind subscriptions.
Those that ripped through my part of Michigan last month were painfully close. One of the fatalities was actually a boy on my son’s Science Olympiad team. It was incredibly tragic.
I’ve lived through many in my life, but have been spared the bulk of catastrophic damage so far. They just keep getting worse and more frequent and it’s almost like we’re doing something to make it that way…..
As a trucker running AZ to OK, life can get entertaining at times. The tornado that hit Shawnee OK back in 2022? Yeah, I was riding just in front of that storm barely staying ahead of the hail front all the way to Tulsa. In a brand new $225,000 peterbilt 389, all aluminum truck. Rough night. Then 2 weeks ago in central TX, I was headed west into a storm, weather radar playing on the dash(a benefit of Android Auto and the MyRadar app) and no tornado watches near me. Pop over a hill… Green skies, intake jet, rotation just southwest of me. Radar updates. Tornado watch, hook echo.
On thing hit my brain: Im in the worst possible place if this drops. No shelter, no time, already in the bear cage. So I hammer down, hoping to get past the possible path, knowing it most likely would proceed northeast. If im lucky. Westbound tornadoes are rare, but knowing my luck…
So I pass into the storm, starting to get hit by hail( in a still pristine 3.5 year old Pete) and then my left windshield wiper(cheap one put on by our shop, asholles took off my good ones for some godforsaken reason) decided to break and go bye bye.
Fuck me
So now im running into hail and rain, no wipers, and I dont wanna stop because rotation behind me. (Looked it up later, no funnel formed.) Only thing saving my precious ass is the ridiculously bad aerodynamic characteristics of the Pete 389. See, due to it having worse aero than a brick wall, the massive bow shock it creates actually pushes rain up and over the top of the truck. I have standing puddles of water on my hood while driving. So driving in a severe thunderstorm without wipers is not to bad in my truck, and I could see pretty dam well. So I punched through the storm without further incident. Needless to say, first thing I did after getting out the other side is to get out and have a good calming breather. Second was to curse at the national weather service. Third, buy quality wipers.
Heck of a day.
That Shawnee one hit one of our factories there and tore a massive hole in the side/roof. Thankfully no one was hurt, but our corporate response was to build a huge concrete tornado shelter to house all the employees if it ever happened again. We actually built one for each of our OK plants, so we did learn something.
The PNW has its own hazards but tornadoes are rare. The only one I remember hit Vancouver Washington about 20 years ago. On the other hand I have forest fires to deal with, although only smoke and road closures since I live on the desert side of town. Of course one of the many Cascades volcanoes could erupt but that’s an edge case
We’re in fire country here in the flammable foothills of California. My F350 longbed dually with camper is our go-vehicle. Bags for us and dogs are in the camper, along with food, water, and paper maps. I have a 4 gallon mechanical backpack sprayer with enough fire retardant and water for two full loads. My neighbors know where it is. If we get a evacuation warning (lower level than mandatory evacuation), the plan is to spray the property down, pack up, and leave.
My PSA recommendations for anyone needing a go-bag:
Each of our go-bags has a list of contents in a water resistant cover (badge holder) so we know what is where. Every item in the house that can not be pre-positioned in the camper (hard drives, computers, lock boxes, CPAP machine, etc.) has a reflective sticker on it. Assume worst case: away from home, at night, power is out, so flashlights will reflect on the important reflective items. Grab anything that reflects and go.
I LOVE the reflective sticker idea!
The problem with sounding the sirens every time there’s a chance of a tornado is that it becomes like the story of the boy that cried wolf. After the 85th time they sound the sirens and nothing happens people just ignore them.
Kansan here. Siren fatigue is real. They generally get ignored, or are used as the signal to go outside and watch!
Yes, I’ve seen that happen. a tornado can be mesmerizing and one doesn’t realize it until it’s too late
My takeaway from this piece: the incredible lumpiness of that rail track. The train looks like it’s travelling along a cart track even before the tornado hits. Maybe better quality track would have reduced the chance of derailment?
As for warnings, overdoing them definitely causes a “cry wolf” mentality. Last Saturday in Nagano prefecture in Japan, everyone’s phones started squawking with earthquake warnings: once in a home centre and later on in a supermarket. There was no noticeable shaking on either occasion, and people blandly carried on with their shopping, mainly because these earthquake warnings are almost always over-cautious false alarms.
This right here is the problem. A “warning” is when a Tornado is spotted, either visually or on radar. Warnings should only be issued when there is a Tornado, but per the report there were 2.6 warnings per actual tornadoes. Which is why people ignore the warnings now.
Per NOAA: https://www.nssl.noaa.gov/education/svrwx101/tornadoes/
I think they should get rid of WATCH and WARNING altogether, too much room for confusion and misinterpretation. Should be more like “TORNADOES LIKELY” and “TORNADO SPOTTED TAKE SHELTER”
It was odd for my wife and I after growing up in the Midwest to live in a house in Alabama with no basement. When the tornado sirens went off we would head to bathroom at the center of the house. We also put on our motorcycle gear if a tornado was on the ground nearby.
Our wildest day was April 27, 2011. 224 tornadoes in one day across the south. Local news live broadcasting EF4 and EF5 tornadoes ripping through towns around Birmingham from up on the ridge. Limbs and all sorts of debris raining down.
It’s a good thing our current kakistocracy has declared climate change to be a hoax.
For those who haven’t learned about kakistocracy yet,
Kakistocracy is a system of government run by the worst, least qualified, or most unscrupulous citizens, literally meaning “government by the worst”. It is characterized by incompetent leadership, corruption, and the prioritization of personal gain over public service, often causing institutional decay. The term originated in the 17th century, derived from the Greek kakistos (worst) and kratos (rule).
Characteristics of a Kakistocracy:
Potential Consequences:
Prevention and Overcoming:
Differences from Other Forms of Government:
The term was coined in the early 19th century (c. 1829 by Thomas Love Peacock) but has roots in the 17th-century Greek adaptation.
I know, I’m like a little kid who just learned a new word. 🙂
Thank you!
Thank you!
Come over to Iowa! We get tornadoes and inland hurricanes!
Just like the Simpsons.
I’m in the KC area and last week was rough. Wind, hail, tornados, on two separate days. One passed within a half mile of my daughters place but luckily she wasn’t home. I had to take cover at work, it was a shit show. Stay safe everyone.
Western PA, the storms here in recent years have been more intense and start earlier in the year then during my youth. Tornados were NEVER an issue in this area, now we get the warnings and alerts as well.
This weather has been crazy being in NWI we have been hit by some really bad storms also. My garage flooded a few weeks back which also has stairs to the basement so I had slight flooding down there luckily the basement door stayed shut and also did not get hit by the near soft ball sized hail Illinois got recently.
In the past several years I’ve noticed tornado activity shifting northerly. As someone who lives in the South, you have my sympathy. Ignoring warnings is an emotional defense mechanism. “Nothing’s happened to me yet. I’m good.” It’s like people not wearing seat belts because they’ve never been in a head on collision.
Is there a way to set the safe into the ground in one of the car storage shelters? You probably wouldn’t want to have all your keys in there, but for the stuff that doesn’t move often, that’s one less thing to manage.
Also, I don’t know why we don’t build more concrete dome houses. Yeah, they’re a bit “weird” looking, but only because people don’t build them and the ones who do tend to do them up weird. They have them in a flat-sided version with a larger diameter roof so that they resemble the Pantheon rather than some decommissioned ’70s scifi movie set piece. Not quite as strong as a half dome, but still highly resistant to pretty much any natural disaster and with a high likelihood of cheaper repair for stuff it’s not as resistant to, like a flood, and the vertical walls make it easier to hang stuff.
My new metal structural insulated panel house is being designed for 200+ mph winds. And it’s jacked up 4′ above street level for flood prevention. If it does flood, the only thing that would need to be replaced is the drywall – the only wood in it is a little bit around the window openings to attach them to and the millwork (and not much millwork). All steel stud construction for the inside walls. Neat stuff, but not at all cheap. I just had another 25 truckloads of dirt brought in this week to finalize the landscaping, trying not think about the fuel surcharge that is going to bring. Thanks Dementia Donnie! Hopefully I never find out how well it holds up to a tornado, but I am not super worried about hurricanes.
I went rather mid-century modern for the design, but they can build to look any way you want. It’s exactly the same panels that walk-in coolers and refrigerated buildings are made of, galvanized steel sandwiching closed-cell expanded foam. Extremely high R-factor. There’s a roof panel and part of a wall panel sitting on the ground in front in this picture. 8″ roof, 6″ walls. This is still the raw steel panels, but it will be stucco and wood siding. 1400sq/ft, 2bd/2bt, lots of closet space, and a 1000sq/ft garage. Should have gone bigger with the garage, I plan to add a 14×20 workshop addition off the back once my wallet recovers from this abuse, aka once I sell one of my current houses.
https://photos.app.goo.gl/mrUuRSWgiBoMw3sW9
Now if the darned thing ever gets finished… It’s been quite a ride.
Yeah, that’s really cool! These alternative constructions are more expensive, but the resiliency, low maintenance, energy efficiency, and (should be) cheaper insurance should more than make up for it. Even the peace of mind has to be worth something. I get that’s not for everyone, but I don’t know why it’s for so few or even why insurance companies don’t demand it in areas that are repeatedly hit by expensive disasters (or just don’t rebuild there, but we’re talking about people, here).
Mostly because the average person simply can’t afford it. Reality is this is a small, decidedly not-luxurious house that is costing me most of a half million to build (not including the land I already owned) that MIGHT appraise at $350K or less when it’s done (and let’s face it, you don’t really want a huge valuation – that means higher taxes). Admittedly, that very large garage disproportionately added to the cost.
Houses are rather like cars at this point – buying new lets you get what you want, but it’s DAMNED expensive compared to buying used. Though amusingly, back at the peak of the real estate bubble here new houses were actually cheaper than new ones if you could afford the time it takes to build one. Which is also a problem for most people. I will be just shy of two years into this by the time I move in three if you count when I bought the lot (paid cash for that). Most people need to sell a house to buy a house and can’t float that kind of time, even with paying as you go along. Or they can’t afford to be paying rent while their new house slowly gets built. “Production” houses may be crap, but they build them fast for a lot less money… Though not SO much here, where even those houses have to meet much tougher code standards compared to most places. That adds time and money to the process.
There is a small adder for this level of hurricane proofing and energy efficiency, but not nearly what you would think simply because there are very few comps. Yes, insurance will be MUCH cheaper. If you don’t have the ability to self-finance that level of building cost, you can’t get a building loan to build it or mortgage it once it’s done. I had two homes worth or equity to use, so I got out of that. But the Trumpian stupidity has used up all the headroom I thought I had. The plan is to sell one or the other of my current homes to pay off the majority, and a small mortgage on the rest once it’s done so I can deduct the interest while paying it off over the next few years. This is a house that should save me a decent chunk of money over the next 30 years, but it’s a big upfront cost to get that savings. If I hadn’t wanted the big garage/workshop I would not have done it. I’m perfectly happy with my current house other than that. The things we do for our hobbies, no?
That’s all true, but greater awareness and acceptance would reduce some of that as well as considering long term savings, like my damn normal house is decent quality, yet it still always needs something. A major issue you touch on is financing. Not many people can self-finance and getting financing for construction is difficult because a bank can’t find comps because nobody builds them because the bank won’t finance . . . Being that these houses are almost always super efficient, there should be some programs to encourage them, as well. Residential HVAC is a big driver of greenhouse gases and a strain on the grid during heat waves.
I was supposed to get a nice tax credit for having the house LEED-Certified. Of course, You-Know-Who’s “Big Beautiful Bill” nixed that, along with the tax credits for heatpump water heaters and solar. I did sneak the water heater in before the deadline, so I did get that one.
For perspective on HOW energy efficient the new house is – my current house is less than 800sq/ft, wood frame and thus a bit better insulated and easier to cool than the typical FL concrete block house, and it has 4 tons of A/C capacity in a typical central HVAC system. The new house is 1400sq/ft and will only have 1.25 tons of A/C in a three-zone ducted mini-split system. Added efficiency in that I can cool JUST the rooms I am using. Also very efficient heatpump water heater and heatpump washer/dryer (unducted, so not blowing A/C’d air out of the house).
Certainly greater awareness would help. There are only two builders in the entire state of FL who can do this – and one of the two is really just a designer – the other guys build his houses too. Which sucks, because I will freely admit that while I LOVE the end product so far, the process of getting here has completely sucked, and that is very much at the feet of my builders.
That’s a good point about the builders, too. When so few deal with this kind of construction, you’re stuck with those few options and they know it. Good contractors for standard stuff are tough to find as it is and you need to wait and pay out to get them.
Thankfully the work has been good – but the communication, coordination, and planning have been awful. I can’t really blame them for the cost overruns, other than the delays have contributed to the prices of various things going through the roof. As usual with a custom home – it’s a “cost plus” contract. Whatever it costs plus 22%… This project was supposed to be complete about the time DJT took the oath of office… I figure he’s cost me $50-80K in increased costs between tariffs and labor cost increases. And now fuel surcharges for the rest of the already very expensive dirt that was delivered this past week.
I’m not too fond of him, either.
ok that’s awesome and now i want one
Is there a name for this type of construction i.e. something I can point to and say “this pls”
Metal Structural Insulated Panels, or metal SIP.
Cost, that is the #1 reason houses aren’t built stronger. #2 is time, concrete houses takes longer, 28 days for the slab, 28 for the wall and 28 for the roof.
That’s definitely a consideration, especially for developments, and I’m not proposing them for that or that these kinds of houses should be a default because they are expensive and time consuming, but someone building a custom home would generally have more time and money. It doesn’t have to be concrete dome specifically, but any high efficiency and disaster-resilient structure. The thing that prompted me to comment this here is that there are places that get repeatedly hammered by major weather events. I’ve read about houses that have been destroyed several times in the course of a decade or two only for them to rebuild an approximately same kind of house on the same spot. That’s insane. At some point, I imagine insurance tells them they’re on their own, but before that, we all pay for someone’s version of the swamp castle from Monty Python and the Holy Grail, except it’s not a castle, it’s overpriced wood shavings and chewing gum. If I’m an insurance company, I’d be considering mandating resilient house reconstruction for high risk areas or I’d be dropping customers (seems they’re doing a fair amount of the latter). Another thing is that people tend to build more house than they need because the cost isn’t much higher to a point, but the value is and, with land value so high and so much of peoples’ wealth tied up in personal real estate, it’s dumb not to even if it’s less efficient. Unfortunately, these “weird” houses don’t hold a higher value per sq ft despite the cost, but they should due to drastically lower upkeep, which would also encourage building more of them instead of oversized McMansions. Oi, I don’t know what I’m arguing at this point, that people should be sensible? WTF, I’m 49 years old and I haven’t learned my lesson yet?
That top shot is perfection!
As someone who grew up in the Midwest, I have memories of tornado drills in school, running into the basement during warnings/watches, etc. Just last year a tornado ripped through my hometown.
Living in Ohio most of my life, my mom scared the crap out of me when she saw one of the 1974 tornadoes and sent me to the basement. Then said I’ll be back, closed the door, and that was it. After a few minutes this 7 year old said F this and went up to see her watching one on TV.
Lived in a little river town called Neville for years because of cheap house, had two cross the river from KY into town right down the street. I am not a fan of bad weather.
And I hate the warnings for “possible” tornadoes. Like I want to know if one is right down the street or not.