ANY BODY HERE ON THE FORUM THAT LIVE IN THE MIDWEST STATES?

I am from Sioux City, IA, where Iowa, Nebraska, and South Dakota meet. Yes, we have tornados. Last June 2014, we had a F5 about 40 miles west of here. That night we got 13" of rain and 5 or 6 more the next day, that was officially measured by the weather folks. We had our roof cave in on Wednesday morning over a middle bedroom, it was a mess. Took a couple of weeks to find roofers but we did. My layout, if that is what it's called, is in the basement which remained dry. we were lucky.

Dick 

Quick Note to "Dick" @ CBQer;

  Tried to e-mail you but the e-mail address in your profile doesn't work. I'm from Orange City and was just trying to make contact. If you'd like, contact me at the address in my profile.

Thanks,

Mark

Sorry, Didn't mean to disrupt this thread.

Hello Seaboard streak • If you go to the blue menu bar on this page, then Members, Sort by, and View as map. You will get the map below. Click the state and each state will show the number of OGR Forum members per state. Below this map is the world map. It is fun to see where everyone is from. 

  Click art screen shot to enlarge. Must go to map for it to work.

Been through three tornadoes, two hurricanes, one dust storm and two blizzards. I survived all of it with one thought in mind, that human life is and always shall be the most important thing period. Trains can be replaced.

Pete

P.S. A Southern Pacific locomotive was tossed several hundreds of yards by a tornado when I was living in Oklahoma. No one was in the locomotive, but it made the yard there look like an atomic bomb hit it.

Hear the tornado sirens every spring in Central Ohio. Closest tornado to my house was about 5 miles.

I have never personally seen a tornado, but I once see a funnel cloud, the beginning of what might become a tornado. I have heard sirens go off several times.

When I was a kid I had an irrational fear of tornadoes. If there was a storm outside, I couldn't go to sleep until a train went by (which was about 200' from my bedroom).

I think you are much more likely to be killed walking across the street in our town than getting killed by a tornado. And this isn't a joke, I know of three instances.

Flooding or potential flooding is a much bigger threat than a tornado, in the northern suburbs of Chicago.

I live right square in the middle of Missouri.  We have had a tornado or two but fortunately they were small, didn't last long, and didn't do much damage.  And my layout is in the lower level of our walkout home.  

I am in northern Illinois, and most homes are built with basements, which is typically where the layouts are, I've only had one close call with a tornado, and that was back in 1967. However, we get them almost annually, and sometimes at odd times of the year. There was a bad one in November 2013, for instance, and the one that derailed the freight train near Harvard, IL, occurred in January, 2008, I believe. (that video has been posted on here a number of times.)

I live west of Chicago, but when I retire, I plan to move a bit further out. But still within 100 miles of Chicago in Illinois or Indiana.

I have had some close encounters, at least of the second kind, with tornadoes:  First I

remember was in a trip across Kansas (where else?) in the 1950's.  Out our left car

window going west we saw two funnel clouds, one to the right and one to the left.  My

mother sped up, but we were almost blown off the road by a Cadillac passing us at

least 100.  We continued out of sight of the tornadoes.  In 1974, when there was a rash of tornadoes in Ohio (Xenia destroyed) and Kentucky (through the state fairgrounds in Louisville), I had a 1934 Chevy sedan in a rented garage in Louisville.

Xenia has been hit with three others since then.  Louisville garage was destroyed, brought down around the car, which was unscathed, although unrestored. (Built to last in them days).  I had to move car to my grandfather's farm. after digging it out of the

garage rubble.

In the 1980's while attending a miiitary school in Montgomery, Ala., I stood outside

the BOQ (bachelor officer' quarters) and watched a funnel cloud, not touching down,

go over my head to touch down on the nearby Interstate.  (I heard later that it had

turned over a tractor trailer).  The next day, class was disrupted and we were all

rushed to the basement for another warning.  I attended another military school in

Wichita Falls, TX, where I spent the 5-6 weeks in a motel room. and eating out, well exhausting the WF culinary choices,  because the base BOQ had been destroyed by a recent tornado.

I have seen two tornados, but never had a home damaged by one.  Closest near miss was when we lived in Omaha in the middle 70's and hit 5 miles away.  Another that I saw the funnel hit 15 miles north of us in Lake Okoboji in northwest Iowa.  Saw two in Orlando when I worked in Tampa, FL.  Spent a lot of time in the basement in Wichita, KS, but no sightings or close calls.

Art

I've seen them near my house & many funnel clouds circling above but not a direct hit. Those funnel clouds circling and quick changes in air temp as you're walking outside scouting really can give you the creeps. We've had many straight-line shear winds.

Worst case so far is when by basement tile plugged, we had a huge down pouring rain and I had 7" of water in the basement. Only 1/4" of getting in contact w/ my trains on skids w/ 3 sump pumps running. Whew! That was too close.

Central Illinois born and bred, lived blocks from the Mainline of Mid-America and the east-west New York Central.  IC Peoria Division and also the NKP Clover Leaf nearby.  Saw my first tornado when living in Minneapolis and trains were definitely in the basement.  Now in the Pacific Northwest.  No basement.  Wind storms but no tornadoes to speak of.

I deal with a tornado every time I run trains.

The fun starts at about 8 minutes into this video.

TJ

Been in 2 of them, they're no joke!

Had one pass less than a mile from our house in AL.  At night.  That was scary, whole house shook.  Heck, we could have been closer, hard to tell at night.  Houses down the street were destroyed.  Not a scratch on my car that was parked outside.  Unreal.

Had one last spring, a mile from our house in a different state.  Destroyed a lot of homes as it went through a neighborhood.  Glad ours wasn't one of them.  Folks are just now moving back into that neighborhood, 8 months later.

It did occur to me that afternoon the investment I had in trains and tools.  I had both insured the next day.

Hello from northwest Oklahoma, we get severe weather in the spring, but

tornadoes are rare in our part of the state! But we have wind storms, grass fires

and a severe drought for the last three years. My trains are not in a basement,

but a 50ft. Rock Island Box Car! So I hope we don't have a tornado or my trains

will Gone With Wind!

I live in the Panhandle of Texas, at the very south end of the Great Plains.  I guess you could put us in the midwest, because this is the south end of Tornado Alley.  We do not have basements.  The builders don't want to build them, their alabai being mixed layers of sand and clay.  Therefore my railroad is upstairs, and the room has had the windows broken by large hail.  If a tornado hits, there will be O-gauge railroad equipment flying all over Amarillo, and then we will rebuild and start again -- with a basement.

Guys sorry it has taken so long to reply.I just got home from work.I didn,t see the tornado but I heared it.And since we live about 2 miles from the old seaboard airline rr.I thought it was just another train going by.With the storm over I had my first car and wanted to town.Well as I was driving down the road.I noticed just how low the clouds were and almost pure black.I rember thinking I have never seen clouds this low.Got another 4 or five miles there were state police firetrucks and just aboutany car that had flashing lights.Well as I was going by I notice a large brick home was missing.Then I looked again this time I saw what must have been the foundation.The tornado touchdown hit the brick house and destoryed it.Sad thing there was a family living there.The tornado killed a baby they never rebuilt the house.After doing that it hit a flea market went across hwy 74.Picked up some poor guy in his pickup truck and set him down.Don,t worry he lived to tell the tail.Hit a plastic manufacting place.Then it hit a town called weddtion were it took out whole neiborhoods.I had model trains h.o.Tornados we get here will rap rain around it self.They tend to be fe1 to ef3 I can not rule out a ef4.Not to long ago we had a storm front they kicked a lot tornadoe in the midwest.Now here is the weird part when it got to nc.It had weakened that is until it got right over my area.It regain it strengh and kick some strong tornadoes in eastern nc.I think there are some on youtube.

Or it could bring you a locomotive to go along with the boxcar.

seaboard streak, you maybe right. I live about a 100 ft. or so from the BNSF

Transcon! I can always HOPE!!

Lived in Texas Panhandle, Northwestern Oklahoma and Southwestern Kansas and Now live in Northwest Arkansas. No basement in any of my homes or trailer houses. I will take tornado's any day than live in a "Big" city with all of the crime.  

30 years in tornado alley no tornado(seen many)problems. If you are heading home from work and the storm chasers are going the other way on the highway, good.  Heading home and the storm chasers pass you head toward your home town, not so good.

Hello Keith, hope you and your family are well. And from our family to

yours, wishing a Merry Christmas and a Blessed new year! Spoke to Wolf

at the OKC Train Show and the guys at the Club at WW Okla. doing well.

Iam with you on the tornado's over the big city crime! If you are ever

in our neck of the woods please come by!

Here's a railroad and tornado story for you:

My partner the Trainmaster and I were out at Amherst, Texas, between Lubbock and Clovis, NM, with the track shunted to produce a red Stop and Proceed signal for a westbound freight crew, as an operations test.  We waited, and waited.  Meanwhile, the sky got darker, the wind picked up, and it began to spit rain.  The Trainmaster and I joked with each other about what lengths we had to go to to test this crew, which had not been tested in some time.  The sky got blacker, wind got windier, the temperature was dropping like a rock, and the rain was still coming down very lightly, but now sideways.

About this time, a storm chaser vehicle that looked like a Buck Rodgers space ship with lots of radio antennas sped past on the parallel highway.  The Trainmaster and I looked at each other and agreed that it would be a good idea to pull up the shunt and head on into Clovis for some pork and green chile.  Two tornadoes touched down, briefly, not far from Amherst that afternoon, but went straight across pasture land and missed any buildings.

Having been very close to where a tornado touched down at Fort Riley, Kansas, in 1966, I can tell you this much -- if the wind is blowing furiously and suddenly becomes extremely calm, grab your best locomotive and head for a ditch. 

Before jumping into a ditch, check and see if it is occupied, in that part of the world.

My brother, on a training exercise, jumped into a ditch with his group, and one of

the guys landed on a copperhead and got bitten.

I'm in St. Louis but I've never seen a tornado.  The layout is in the basement and the benchwork is extra sturdy to be a place of refuge.  We haven't had a storm bad enough to get me under it yet. 

Got to say, I'll take narrow random tornadoes over 100 mile wide hurricanes. . . Since 1950 there have been 130 hurricanes that made landfall in the lower 48 states, doing twice the damage of the 53,000 tornadoes over the same period.  (Read it in a newspaper article last spring, WSJ I think it was.)

Nathan

I grew up in St. Louis, Missouri, where I currently reside and without a doubt, given the violence and frequency of severe weather not only here but - as we've witnessed in the recent past - all across the United States and especially the south, having a basement or reinforced storm shelter is a must for every family.  I worked out of Texarkana, AR, for a time and took note that many of the very old homes in downtown Texarkana actually had basements, despite that everyone was telling me "nobody has basements down here" because of the high water tables.. Well OK, but I guess this didn't apply to the older homes then??  Anyways with little choice, I rented a newer home w/o a basement during my time down there as a manager with Kansas City Southern RR.  No basement meant no trains, which had to stay behind in St. Louis.  To put it bluntly, the quality of new home construction down there was crap.  When severe weather was predicted at night, I would have to stay up just to keep posted of incoming storms and if something looked ugly approaching on the radar, I would just get in my car and drive down to the RR yard office, board the yard switcher and ride things out in the cab, with the toilet compartment in the nose the place to go if a tornado did approach.  Having a weather radio with their loud and constant alarms waking me up is worse, in my opinion, than just staying awake & aware.  Thankfully I'm back in St. Louis and enjoy a large, strong basement to keep me and my trains safe.  -Scott