And some clean pants in the glove box!
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Dude: “oh, i’ll just pick this stuff up and move it”
Mother Nature: “um…no”
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For a second, I couldn’t even process what I was seeing:
THREE tractor trailers on their sides.
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Ron White was born about 20 minutes from Amarillo, and he grew-up nearby. So, he knows his wind survival techniques. A local favorite trick is to drink alot and lie down.
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Good advice for a lot of things in life.
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I have had a few commutes where I was leaning the bike to go straight forward. Crosswinds on 2 wheels is not fun.
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… and… helium!
Amarillo is a helluva place. I’ve been.
One of my best friends was born and raised there, and she says the wind. never. ever. stops.
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she says the wind. never. ever. stops.
Absolutely true. If it stops, we all take cover, because there’s probably a tornado.
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Should I put a bag over my head?
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My personal favorite wind porn video:
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I saw this once on my way to Antelope Valley CA. Stretches of highway with 6-8 semis on their sides on each open straight away. The problem we had was that there are a bunch of hills/small mountains, so when it’s gusty, the gaps in the hills act like wind funnels where the wind speed can be considerably higher than the general wind movement. Scary as hell to drive in in a passenger car. Can’t even imagine how bad driving a giant box would be.
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Being from the American Midwest, I have always wanted to ask this:
what do you / y’all do in Amarillo when the twister comes? Basements? Dugout cellars (where you have to exit your house and then go below through an exterior-facing door?
Serious question.
I live in Texas now and have been through two derechos…
… since I got here, and I really would like to know what you know about Texas and big bad winds.
Other tested, effective ideas:
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Honest answer: We put the family and pets in a bathtub in an interior (closest to center of the house) bathroom with a mattress over their heads, then we go out side and gawk at the sky.
More reasonable answer: Some, too few, houses are built with basements. Some people put in buried external storm cellars, often made of fiberglass or prefabricated concrete. There are also small circular storm shelters made of steel that can bolt into the concrete in a garage or on a patio, and internal safe rooms made of sturdy steel which can be built into a (large) existing closet. So whatever you can afford.
The fact that we allow construction without basements is hard to justify since a tornado will, on average hit every square centimeter of the Texas Panhandle over a 200 year period, and most of us have lost someone in our extended family in one tornado or another. But then a good number of our public policies are hard to justify, not the least of which being claiming part of Mexico in the first place.
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Tonight on 60 minutes…
200 km/h is terminal velocity. So thats one G of force, sideways.
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Happened to me a couple of years ago, on the day we had the thunderstorm asthma event in Melbourne. I was in a wind tunnel between a couple of large buildings and while staying upright was tricky, my wheels just slid sideways across the road. It is the only time on my bike commute where I have ever had to just stop and wait the conditions out.
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I rode a motorcycle for a few hours during a coastal gale that required close to a 45° lean to go straight. The really tricky bits are the momentary windbreaks whenever you pass a truck or billboard…
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I think I would have found a cafe or motel and sat it out.
