6 Tornado myths

[mwb]

Nowhere in that article can you find any information on how to protect your tractor in a tornado

 

[patrick_g]

Nowhere in that article can you find any information on how to protect your tractor in a tornado

Not sure why a Montana owner would be interested given the throw away nature of their equipment and any effort spent trying to safeguard it would exceed the value of the protected equipment.

OK, so I'm a little late for April fool's day... Actually I have a friend with a Montana and I was quite impressed with the cost/feature ratio. It seemed too good to be true and apparently was as since they gained popularity the price went up dramatically. Still good machines just not such a fantastic cost, more in line with Kubota and other good machines.

Protection of life first and then property second, OK? Now as to the top of the priority list for property might be your nice Montana. When you build your above ground shelter make it big enough to also hold your tractor. Have a walk out (Tractor drive-in) basement. Insure it for all the company will allow - replacement value no deductible and then buy a small used trailer house to park near your tractor. As is obvious to even the most casual observer, tornadoes are attracted to trailer houses. The tornado will swoop on the trailer and destroy your tractor but you get a nice new shiny one.

Alternatively if you have totally bonded with your machine, then park the trailer as far from your tractor as possible and lure the tornadoes away from it.

Pat AF5CK

 

[tractchores]

Nowhere in that article can you find any information on how to protect your tractor in a tornado

There's a sure fire way that works every time - a good insurance policy

 

[Bird]

I am 57 and have never actually seen one of the things in person..

You just don't know what you've missed, but you can be thankful that you've missed it.:laughing: We left Dallas the morning of July 1, 1972, enroute to Alaska and that afternoon, we got to see a tornado in the Texas panhandle. It was coming straight at us, and I was driving a 3/4 ton Chevy pickup, pulling a 25' travel trailer and we were in the flat wide open spaces without so much as a borrow ditch. We were going west on U.S. 87 west of Dumas and the tornado was south of us and coming north. My wife was hysterical and I was scared out of my wits, but there was nothing we could do. For some reason that tornado turned east before it go to us. And I hope to never get that good a look at one again.

 

[k0ua]

You just don't know what you've missed, but you can be thankful that you've missed it.:laughing: We left Dallas the morning of July 1, 1972, enroute to Alaska and that afternoon, we got to see a tornado in the Texas panhandle. It was coming straight at us, and I was driving a 3/4 ton Chevy pickup, pulling a 25' travel trailer and we were in the flat wide open spaces without so much as a borrow ditch. We were going west on U.S. 87 west of Dumas and the tornado was south of us and coming north. My wife was hysterical and I was scared out of my wits, but there was nothing we could do. For some reason that tornado turned east before it go to us. And I hope to never get that good a look at one again.

Jeez Bird that sounds scary.. maybe I am lucky to have missed always missed them. The one that came thru Branson a few weeks ago I was 200 hundred miles away. Not that it came thru my place anyway, the wife was home and she said it got a bit windy, but no damage at all.

James K0UA

 

[Bird]

Jeez Bird that sounds scary.. maybe I am lucky to have missed always missed them. The one that came thru Branson a few weeks ago I was 200 hundred miles away. Not that it came thru my place anyway, the wife was home and she said it got a bit windy, but no damage at all.

James K0UA

Jim, I don't think there's hardly any way a person can describe what a tornado can do. Yes, that one I saw terrified me, but didn't harm us. But then on Oct. 17, 1998, I was on our volunteer fire department and went to the results of a tornado on State Highway 31 a couple of miles east of Silver City. A double wide mobile properly installed and anchored was blown away by a tornado. The twisted steel frames for the two halves were probably a hundred yards apart and a couple of hundred yards from where they had been. The family had all still been asleep that morning. The man of the family was dead in the creek a couple of hundred yards behind where the house had been. The woman was in a field on the other side of the creek, one little boy was sitting in the front yard and the other two were in the pasture. The woman and 3 little boys spent quite a bit of time in the hospital, but all 4 survived. We rounded up a number of family photos from the pasture and things of that sort, but other than the two twisted steel frames, I did not find a single piece of lumber or sheetrock or other material as big as a two foot 2 x 4. And to make it even more unbelievable, there was a corrugated sheet metal shed, open on two sides, maybe 15' square across the driveway from the house, maybe 20-25' away from the house. There were rabbits in cages and a horse in that shed and they were completely undisturbed. There were no other homes close and no other damage anywhere. It's just absolutely incredible what tornados do. (And when the place was rebuilt, it was a site built house instead of manufactured or mobile, and I noticed they built a "safe room" into it.)

You might find The 1957 Dallas Tornado to be interesting reading. I later worked with one of the survivors who was quite a character. He said he, his wife, their 2 little boys, and the dog were all under a bed with him and the dog trying to dig a foxhole in a hardwood floor with their finger nails when the tornado blew their house completely away, and left the bed they were under. Everything was gone except that bed and none of those under it were even injured. (Incidentally, when they rebuit the house, he had a bomb shelter installed in the back yard).

 

[k0ua]

Yes even the one that came thru Branson did some strange things, just in the space of hwy76, (and those of you that have been to branson know how narrow that little road is) you have buildings totally destroyed on one side and unhurt on the other.

James K0UA

 

[greasemonkeyok]

There was an engineer's two story house in Norman completely blown away by a tornado (last year?). Nothing left but the slab. He had all the extra straps, extra bolts in the foundation, etc. None of it helped save the house.

They were all in the storm shelter and were ok.

 

[jonyyuma]

Some-times, the path is only a couple hundred yards wide..Slabs stripped here and the windows of other homes are not broken on both sides of it. Trailers or prefabs just do not do well in tornados??

 

[Western]

I've seen 2 and I'll pass if given the chance, only "predictable " thing is they are un-predictable. Last one, Got my family underground and got to hear huge hail 3"-4", beat the door and ground so hard you couldn't hear each other yell. Sucked my ball cap off when I was closing the door, never found it. Then it went and ended up taking an old fella that had taken refuse in a bathtub, carried him like 200 yards, never heard if he pulled through.