Big Jim...

[MacV2]

Let us know your not under water mate...

Been a bit of heavy weather over your way of late...

[Big_Jim59]

Thanks for asking. Texas is a a pretty enormous place. I live about 60 miles north east of Dallas and it is about 250 miles from Houston. The eye of the hurricane hit below Houston. The bad news is the eye has not come on shore (which causes it to lose strength) and the rotation is churning up the coast. The amount of water coming down is just savage. To add insult to injury the Houston area is rather flat plain and low. It is crisscrossed by bayous that usually take the rain water runoff but not this time. This is a once in a life time event. I am up near the Oklahoma border and the most we have gotten is a few rain showers and lots of dark fast moving clouds.

[VTRDark]

Good to hear your safe and sound Jim You say it's once in a lifetime but it was not long ago that New Orleans got hit by a once in a lifetime. Who's next. These events are getting more and more frequent with the changes in the global weather system. You know what I have never understood is why in the US you insist on building houses out of spit. So many prefab's and lots of lightweight materials. It's like there's no attempt to build something to withstand twisters etc.

May the force be with you....er...maybe that's not quite the most apropriate saying considering.

[Big_Jim59]

Good to hear your safe and sound Jim You say it's once in a lifetime but it was not long ago that New Orleans got hit by a once in a lifetime. Who's next. These events are getting more and more frequent with the changes in the global weather system. You know what I have never understood is why in the US you insist on building houses out of spit. So many prefab's and lots of lightweight materials. It's like there's no attempt to build something to withstand twisters etc.

May the force be with you....er...maybe that's not quite the most apropriate saying considering.

I am not sure that weather (hurricanes) are any more sever then they have ever been. There were lots of hurricane events recorded by the Spanish in that area in the 1600s. The port of Galveston was wiped out Sept. 8, 1900. They raised the whole island 17 feet behind a sea wall as a precaution. It really is a dangerous part of the world.

As for houses made of spit, you are correct. California has serious earthquake codes in home building. There are some codes in Texas for high winds but the problem is nothing can really withstand the highest tornadic winds. The force and power are amazing. We do have welded steel safe rooms that can be installed in a garage and bolted to a concrete slab. These are pretty nice to have (if you don't use them for storage and pack them with stuff.)

The truth is most of the weather destruction in Texas is dramatic but not wide spread. (Except for coastal hurricanes.) Tornado usually cut a path of destruction leveling several homes and leaving the ones next door untouched. To give you some idea, there are small share cropper shacks all over Texas that date from the late 1800 and early 1900s. Most are barely standing but they still stand. You would think, that with our weather, they would all be blown down by now but they haven't been.

By the way, in the US, there are no national building codes. Building codes are set by the individual states and to some degree the counties and cities within those states.