Giant Lab Replicates Category 3 Hurricanes 97
Pickens writes "The WSJ reports that a new $40 million research center built by the Institute for Business & Home Safety in Richburg, SC features a massive test chamber as tall as a six-story building that can hold nine 2,300-square-foot homes on a turntable where they can be subjected to tornado-strength winds generated by 105 giant fans to simulate a Category 3 hurricane. The goal is to improve building codes and maintenance practices in disaster-prone regions even though each large hurricane simulation costs about $100,000. The new IBHS lab will be the first to replicate hurricanes with winds channeling water through homes and ripping off roofs, doors and windows. The new facility will give insurers the ability to carefully videotape what happens as powerful winds blow over structures instead of relying on wind data from universities or computer simulations. The center will also be used to test commercial buildings, agriculture structures, tractor-trailers, wind turbines, and airplanes."
Tornado Strength? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Tornado Strength? (Score:5, Insightful)
The actual cone of the tornado is extremely fast, quite powerful, and is where all the crazy stuff happens(large objects being lifted, spare I-beams getting shoved neatly through trees, etc.) Surrounding that is an area of air disturbance, with strength decreasing as you get further out.
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I was in a hurricane in the early '70s, and in a tornado in 2006. A category 1 tornado is a gentle breeze compared to an F2 tornado. I journaled about it here. [slashdot.org]
Re:Tornado Strength? (Score:4, Insightful)
"A category 1 tornado is a gentle breeze compared to an F2 tornado. I journaled about it here."
I think you meant
"A category 1 hurricane is a gentle breeze compared to an F2 tornado. I journaled about it here."
And I agree. One of my co-workers in Scotland was commenting that they had a force 7 gale going there. I looked it up. 31-38 mph winds. We have a word for that in Kansas:
Spring.
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And I agree. One of my co-workers in Scotland was commenting that they had a force 7 gale going there. I looked it up. 31-38 mph winds. We have a word for that in Kansas:
We have a word for that here where I live near The Geysers; we live in a structure which is known commonly wherever it occurs as "the mouth of the dragon". 31-38 mph winds means that it's the afternoon.
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Yes, you're correct. I meant to say a category 1 hurricane, not tornado.
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And I agree. One of my co-workers in Scotland was commenting that they had a force 7 gale going there. I looked it up. 31-38 mph winds. We have a word for that in Kansas: Spring.
A gale is really just the step after breeze (force 6 is strong breeze), you go through all the gale levels (7-9) then all the storm levels (10-12) before you get to a hurricane. Not sure where he's from in Scotland for a gale to be all that special, they should be getting roughly the same weather as us here in Norway over the North Sea and it's not that uncommon.
Even though storms have the full force of the Atlantic to build on, the strongest hurricane we've measured here in Norway was in 1992 and it was on
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"A category 1 tornado is a gentle breeze compared to an F2 tornado. I journaled about it here."
I think you meant
"A category 1 hurricane is a gentle breeze compared to an F2 tornado. I journaled about it here."
And I agree. One of my co-workers in Scotland was commenting that they had a force 7 gale going there. I looked it up. 31-38 mph winds. We have a word for that in Kansas:
Spring.
A semi-calm spring day. Winds in the 40s without an accompanying storm isn't rare. Straight 70+ mph winds during a storm is very common. I'll never get used to that (neighboring you in Nebraska, recently moved here).
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This will be used to refine vulnerability functions for modeling. The buildings can't/won't be built to withstand the forces, but they can reduce the insurers uncertainty about how much damage will be caused, and therefore how much to charge for an insurance policy.
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Do you work for FM Global? That's what they preach for a living; it's true, and a fair point, and most builders don't have the correct incentives to build homes and buildings with risk in mind. Once it's sold, developers get to pocket profits.
I'd actually be more interested in what this does to regulatory requirements for buildings across the country.
Re:Tornado Strength? (Score:5, Informative)
Category 3 hurricane is Winds (1 min sustained winds): 111-130 mph [noaa.gov]
Category F2 tornado is Significant Tornado: 112 - 157 mph [datarecovery.com]
The hurricane scale goes higher - a level F3 tornado (158 - 206 mph) would be a category 5 hurricane (>155 mph) and there's no match for a F4 or F5 tornado. And thank you very much for that...
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Yea, well ... my dad's a tornado and he could rip YOUR house down!
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Not to mention that, depending on where they make landfall, hurricanes often fire up occasional tornadoes. I've seen this happen in Florida, for example. Talk about getting hit from every possible angle.
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Category 3 hurricane is Winds (1 min sustained winds): 111-130 mph [noaa.gov] Category F2 tornado is Significant Tornado: 112 - 157 mph [datarecovery.com]
The hurricane scale goes higher - a level F3 tornado (158 - 206 mph) would be a category 5 hurricane (>155 mph) and there's no match for a F4 or F5 tornado. And thank you very much for that...
It should be noted that the scale used now is the Enhanced Fujita (EF), not the Fujita scale (F). The numbers change a little with that.
EF2: 113-135MPH
EF3: 136-165MPH
Information on the new scale here. [wikipedia.org]
Re:Tornado Strength? (Score:5, Interesting)
Yeah, generally you don't even try to build to withstand a direct hit from a tornado, it'd just be way too expensive. The odds of any particular building getting smacked by a tornado are fairly small, and even a big tornado affects a much smaller area than your average landfall hurricane.
Designing to survive hurricane force winds is much more feasible, and it's cool to watch some actual experimentation. Note from the video, that right before the house on the left collapses, the front door is pushed open. Once the wind gets into the house, it needs to go somewhere, and it basically lifts the house up allowing it to fall over. You have to bolt the whole house together vertically, from the foundation all the way up to the rafters.
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Reinforced concrete and cement buildings fall apart all the time due to hurricane force winds+storm surge.
Wood falls apart more easily, but we don't need to build to withstand european windstorms, only the (relatively infrequent) hurricanes.
Re:Tornado Strength? (Score:5, Informative)
To clarify, the smallest hurricanes have a larger geographical footprint than the largest tornadoes. A hurricane cannot form in a small area, and a tornado cannot be that large; the difference is in intensity. Tornadoes have much faster winds. Despite this, hurricanes are a larger source of damage.
In fact, the largest losses to insurance due to tornadoes+hail+wind in a given storm is just over $2bn, which is a big yawn compared to a large hurricane loss. It wouldn't make the top 20. Average loss per year for insurers due to hurricanes in the US has been higher than that, in the last 15 years or so. (And insurers are better at not paying claims for hurricanes, since "storm surge" is excluded due to it being flood.)
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And hurricanes often spawn a very large number of tornadoes. It would be a rare hurricane that didn't spawn some of them.
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You don't see the front door open in the video. The front shot of the house where you see movement through the door frame is actually showing the right side of the building snapping off the foundation.
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The odds of any particular building getting smacked by a tornado are fairly small
Not when the tornado is tearing through a neighborhood. When an F2 ripped through my neighborhood (journal linked in another comment), few buildings came out unscathed. The damage is mostly from stuff flying through the air at 300 mph. The destruction the day after was unimaginable, and hard to describe. I saw huge I-beams twised, and it wasn't the wind that twisted them, it was heavy stuff hitting them at a high rate of speed.
Re:Tornado Strength? (Score:5, Informative)
Well, yeah, once something is happening, the odds of it happening are pretty high. Anyways, I'm not try to belittle tornadoes, I actually find them far more scary than a hurricane, because with a hurricane we have ample warning to get out of the way.
But for your average home in kansas or some other tornado prone state, the overall chance of that house being hit by a tornado in its lifetime are less than the odds of a house in florida to be impacted by a hurricane in its lifetime. That combined with the fact that designing to protect against hurricane force winds is a good bit easier than designing against tornado force winds has led to our society in general to decide that for most of our buildings, the costs of tornado proofing are not worth it.
Better to send the people underground or wherever is safe, and just let the tornado have its way with the buildings. Mother Nature wins that fight by default, we don't even try to step into the ring.
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While I agree chances are small to be hit by tornado, even in a active area (I live in one - North Alabama). Building to minimize damage with something like ICF has other benefits as well. And tornado shelters make great meth labs! Wait, did I remember to ventilate mine ....
******
ICF -insulated concrete forms. I was tempted to leave it .. just to see what people interpreted it as.
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A buddy with a construction company in Florida built his house as a 40 foot square (1600 sq. feet) with a pyramidal shaped roof (cathedral ceiling inside and all interior walls end at 9' high) so that there are no flat roof surfaces for the wind to build up agains. For the framing, there were the standard threaded rod ties coming up from the slab, through the footers of the wall, and bolted down but he also put additional ties running up from the slab all the way up through the outside walls, that then go t
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Yet another effort by insurers to figure out what claims they can deny? For them, $100,000 a pop would be a good investment, if they can use the data to deny a single claim.
Beware of what you wish for in hurricane science.
Slow news day (Score:1, Funny)
This news story blows.
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or the rest of the world sucks.
Re:Slow news day (Score:5, Funny)
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Hurricanes blow, but tornados REALLY suck.
Testing homes (Score:5, Funny)
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Why does it have to be so different over here? It's always boggled my mind with all the wooden houses going up. Even 'brick' houses are just wooden houses with a brick fascia( Yes, I know, some older buildings are proper brick).
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Sure, but then don't complain if the hurricane/tornado takes your house (or the neighbourhood) down.
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When wood structures fail in a hurricane, it is usually not the building materials that failed. The problem with many houses is that they are made up of a roof sitting on top of walls sitting on a floor. The individual roof, walls, and floors are pretty strong. The problem is how they are fastened together. For instance, in the video in the article, you see that bottom of the front wall is pushed in to the house. The wall itself stays intact. Then the whole house basically just slides off the foundati
Re:homes made of wood (Score:5, Interesting)
With wood, the wood has to be processed, granted at a much lower cost than the concrete section fabbing. Then it has to be shipped just like the prefabbed. But then it changes - The amount of labour that goes in to laying floor joists, laying & fastening floor sheets (which all results in a boing-ey floor anyway), framing wall sections on the floor then raising them, then ultimately installing insulation and poly, is quite a lot more than I imagine an efficient prefab production line would be.
Note that I have no actual idea of the relative costs of anythign above, but i'm genuinely curious as i'm sure that an efficient prefab system could turn out cheaper, or at least on-par. Then you get the benefit of stronger houses. Oh and there's nothing to stop you doing the internal framing with wood/metal studs, so you still get the freedom to change/customise the internal layout.
I do agree, however, that pure brick or poured concrete buildings would be more expensive. I also agree that *right now* it would be more expensive as an efficient prefab infrastucture would need to be built up over time. With the "PROFIT NOW, NOT LATER!!!" mentality of businesses over here, this is not likely to ever happen.
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I think the prefab options I mentioned above would be both. It's quicker/easier to deliver and raise a wall rather than deliver, take 2*4's to the floor, build wall on the floor, raise wall, install insulation/poly when house is framed.
Re:homes made of wood (Score:4, Interesting)
It's not that much quicker. A good framing crew can put the whole house up in a few days. It's weird when you're monitoring a job. The sitework seems to take forever and it doesn't look like that much is going on. Then the framing starts and in a couple days there's this big wooden house that appeared out of nowhere. And you think damn, this thing is like 80% done, we'll be finished in no time. Then all of the interior build-out starts, and it takes months and feels like it'll never end.
Also framing tends to be very mistake tolerant. If the designer or the builder did something wrong, it's generally not a big deal to tear it out and rebuild it better. All of the framing works together to provide strength to the house, so temporarily removing any single stud/joist/section of wall/whatever usually won't result in collapse, as there's plenty of redundancy in the structure.
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Working with Habitat for Humanity, we can frame an entire 1400 sq foot house in a day. We can get the roof rafters up in another day. Third day gets sheathing up on walls and roof. Is something to see what 10-20 guys can do in a few days.
When our house was built, our contractor brought in a husband/wife team for the framing. They had the entire two story house framed in three weeks, all by themselves, except for a crane crew for the roof trusses.
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Prefab modular houses can be cheaper than stick built, and they generally have good hurricane resistance since they have to be able to be carried to their site by truck. Stick built is a known quantity, though, so people stick with it (pun intended).
If I were building a new home I'd either have it made in a modular factory or preferably, build a prefab LV - www.rocioromero.com.
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I happen to *know* that the prefab concrete parts only come in concrete
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http://www.cement.org/homes/brief09.asp [cement.org]
According to the cement site, materials cost seem to not be that much more. Labor cost is almost double for normal concrete construction, but the pre-fab modular homes are not that much more. It seems quite feasable to shell out a bit more just so the home doesn't blow away each year. Why won't they do it in the hurricane and tornado prone areas?
When you add in insulation costs, it seems closer in price: http://www.cement.org/homes/ch_sb_solidinvest.asp [cement.org]
Since it's a
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Also, at least in Tampa Bay area, just about all the brick buildings in the area had bricks shipped in from Georgia. There's very little clay available over most of Florida. Insulated Concrete Forms would be the way to go but the cost of concrete has been going up much faster than other building materials, as China expands it's infrastructure [theoildrum.com].
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However there are limitations. The vast majority of houses are 1 floor with the odd house with 2 floor. Once you hit 3 floors or more, prefab concrete and in place pored concrete become very common.
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I always wonder this. Even in non-hurricane zones, houses in Europe (England & Germany is all I know about) are made of brick or poured/prefabbed concrete.
In England at least, this has a lot to do with the first building codes brought in after the Great Fire Of London [wikipedia.org] in 1666 . The codes specified non-flammable building materials, eg brick or stone.
To this day, almost all (if not all) houses are brick built, including the suburban tracts that would look familiar to Americans. AFAIK pre-fab concrete was a big thing in the 1950s-60s, mostly for government-built 'council houses' [wikipedia.org] and especially tower blocks (what a USian might call a 'project'). This method fell
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As for the prefab, the type I was referring to was not for 'project' type council houses. This w
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there was a spate of building houses from wood in the 80's. That's about when those ones opposite went up. Maybe the codes were temporarily laxed?
If you mean what I think you mean there's some of those opposite my childhood home too, (almost exactly like this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Builder's_tudorbethan.jpg [wikipedia.org] )- I thought the wood on the exterior was cosmetic with brick/something else underneath the wood and render. I might of course be wrong.
As for the prefab, the type I was referring to was not for 'project' type council houses. This was for individual custom house builds. You wouldn't know it was a prefab build by looking at it. It just happened to be on my bike ride to work near Munich so I was watching with interest. The main structure (ground floor sections, ground floor walls, 1st floor sections, 1st floor walls) went up in, I kid you not, 2 days. I watched my wood-framed house in Canada being built and although I had the same 'fook me that was quick' feeling once the main framing started, it was by no means even comparable to the speed the prefab one in Munich went up. These are just my observations.
I heard before that pre-fab was popular in mainland Europe. Probably the extensive use for council housing in the UK created a stigma for pre-fab that still exists here (along with render and almost an
That's why they refer to the UK housing market as (Score:1)
the Brickish Empire
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we just had a tornado in my part of NYC last month and only the trees fell down. all the homes are made of brick and concrete and all survived intact even though the tornado passed right over us.
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It wasn't a tornado. Sorry. (I live in queens.)
It was just very windy in a place that isn't used to it. The wooden prefab apartments in flushing didn't fall down either - And they are basically all wood frame + sheet rock.
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Here we go again. We locals seem to have this argument a lot lately ;)
We're talking very separate regions, because the Bronx was affected by a different tornado that day too.
I'm just surprised there's no technology in New York to accurately detect tornados in advance. Kansas tornado chasers have advance warning, while NYC had to wait days after this storm before authorities even confirmed a tornado really hit. It's an outrage --how does Kansas ever manage?
It's not just that crummy Statue of Liberty 20 mile
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Here we go again. We locals seem to have this argument a lot lately ;)
We're talking very separate regions, because the Bronx was affected by a different tornado that day too. It's not just the boring Statue of Liberty 20 miles south that'll get blown up like in the movies. We aint safe anywhere
I'm just surprised there's no technology in New York to accurately detect tornados in advance. Kansas tornado chasers have advance warning and detailed satellite tracking, while NYC had to wait days after this storm b
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Here we go again. We locals seem to have this argument a lot lately ;)
We're talking very separate regions. The Bronx was confirmed to be affected by a different tornado that day. It's not just the boring Statue of Liberty 20 miles south that'll get blown up like in the movies. We aint safe anywhere.
I'm just surprised there's no technology in New York to accurately detect tornados. Tornado chasers have advance warning and detailed satellite tracking, while NYC had to wait days after this storm before authori
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The wooden frame house I'm living in now was built in the early 50's and has survived three hurricanes and several tropical storms. It creaked and groaned a bit, ok a lot, during Ike in 2008 but didn't suffer any damage. Not so much as a broken window. IIRC my neighborhood had sustained winds in 90mph range with recorded gusts up around 110mph. The house endured that beating for good four hours while the massive storm passed over.
Wood is much stronger than most people realize. The softwoods commonly used in
Re:homes made of wood (Score:4, Informative)
Correct. When you look at a wood structure failing (like in the video), you do not see wood being ripped apart or anything like that. What you see is that big structures are separated from each other. The structures remain intact (at least until they fly into something else). The problem is how the structures are fastened to each other (ie wall to floor and roof). Strapping the roof to the walls with metal instead of just using nails makes a big difference.
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Also, after watching the video a few times, I think that the "normal" house was built in such a way to almost guarantee that it would fail catastrophically. There was no electrical wiring or plumbing, which while not being something that we rely on to be structural, would have held changed how the building collapsed. But most importantly, the interior of the house seems to have been completely devoid of gyp. board. Gyp. board serves as more than just a versatile wall covering, it also provides structural su
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Grew up in Florida, in a house from the late 60's. Never had any real damage other than losing a fair number of asphalt shingles on year 24 or a 30 year roof, back in '04. But it was a concrete block house, not OSB over wood.
Here in NM, I wanted to build a rammed earth house but the county permit requirements were so steep and demanding (even using bonded rammed earth contractors from next county over), ended up going with OSB over wood. Now that we're in the house, it's no problem to go and build rammed ea
Wake me when they have general disaster sim (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Simulator (Score:5, Interesting)
If they wanted to see what the effect of a class 3 hurricane, they should come to my house and look at my kids rooms. Some people already think I was simulating an F5 tornado.
I asked someone from Environment Canada what the difference between an F4 and F5 tornado was, his answer was "an F4 destroys everything, an F5 destroys everything and cleans up after itself". Given those parameters, it sounds like your kids are only simulating an F4. ;)
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There used to be an F6 rating. The Fujita scale originally went from F0 to F12 but everything over F5 was purely hypothetical; F5 itself meant maximum possible destruction so they just cut it off there.
Further reading [wikipedia.org] if you're interested. Personally, I find it fascinating.
Response to Global Warming? (Score:2, Interesting)
Why not try to combat the sources of global warming at the same time? Green, renewable energy might also help the insurance industry save money.
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Actually the real issue that property insurance companies are concerned about is rising ocean levels. If you look at a map, much of the insured property is fairly close to a coast. Rising water levels will increase the frequency and severity of damage from floods and wind-driven water. Some insurance companies have stopped writing insurance in flood-prone areas and it's even going to get worse.
So yes, global warming is a real concern to insurance companies--as they are used to looking out many years on t
Giant fans (Score:1, Funny)
I saw this a couple of days ago under the headline "Hundreds of Giant Fans Rip House Apart". I thought it was talking about football fans.
Christ (Score:2)
I just read "Giant Crab replaces Category 3 Hurricane"... need to cut down on the cheetos.
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No, they're metal fans.
Awesome! Right? (Score:4, Insightful)
I am very confused with the replies I read here (see above).
My first thought when I heard about this was: Awesome! In big capital letters.
I am a fan of overpowered machines that dwarf anything else... and this is just really really big, and it was built with the sole purpose to destroy things... It's a really cool toy!
However, the average slashdotter seem to find quite a few things wrong with this... or they just make a joke about it (+1 for jokes).
Is there something wrong with me? Am I alone?
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Indeed awesome, but when you look for comments modded 3 to 5 informative or insightful, (or filter the low ones out from the git-go) you'd get a much more interesting discussion forum, with links too.
Mythbusters (Score:2)
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Yes, and no.
The Mythbusters were testing a couple of StormChaser vehicles for wind survivability. They tested linear wind from the optimal direction the vehicle was designed for (I would have loved to see the fancier one with the struts turned 90 or even 180 degrees, because that vehicle was very specifically designed to only resist wind from a pretty specific direction).
This building looks like they can use the louvers over the fans to adjust wind direction (possibly even setting up some cyclone forces),
Indoor r/c anyone? (Score:2)
One could even test crosswind, tailwind, or gail force wind landings...
Dog bites man is not news. (Score:2)
South Carolina (Score:1, Funny)
By locating in South Carolina they will get to test the test building sooner or later with a real hurricane!
What a waste (Score:1)
There's no reason for a hurricane to be anything more than a public nuisance. I lived under Wilma for a whole 48 hours (just leaving five years ago tonight as a matter of fact), and Emily only a few months before that. How did we prepare? Bought lots of beer (before they cut off liquor sales a full 36 hours before it hit, the bastards!), tied down the water tank on the roof and pruned a few trees (one still fell over anyway), probably didn't need to board up the windows. Power was back on in the center of t
Dome home test needed (Score:2)
I'll bet money (Score:2)
Something is wrong with this picture (Score:2)
>"give the insurers the ability to carefully videotape"
If they're spending $100k per simulation, I would hope they could afford to upgrade to digital solutions.
Neat but... already exisits (Score:1)