15 ms·

Amazon Facility Hit by Tornado

121 points by kordlessagain 5y ago

nerbert 5y ago
"If you're ever in such a facility and a tornado hits, hide in a truck" is my take from this video. Edit: it’s a bad take, read below.
- kodah 5y ago
  That's an absolutely terrible idea. Trucks are built with thin metal and probably have objects inside, not to mention could be easily lifted off the ground and thrown. In areas that are susceptible to tornados buildings are usually supposed to be built with at least one or two areas that have no windows and reinforced surroundings to hide when tornado alarms go off.
  - wyldfire 5y ago
    Yes there definitely was an interior bathroom designed as tornado shelter in this building. While it may or may not have stayed intact, it was your best chance at survival.
  - scrose 5y ago
    I’m pretty sure their comment was based on the almost flawless looking trucks in the rubble…
    - jeffbee 5y ago
      That is interesting but for all we know there was another row of trucks in the middle part that got picked up and thrown for miles. My Oklahoma high school took a direct hit from a tornado and cars in the parking lot were found wadded up all over town. If a tornado can pick up an Oldsmobile it can pick up a Sprinter. Refer to these photos of what a tornado does to a truck. https://www.washingtonpost.com/photography/interactive/2021/see-damage-caused-by-deadly-quad-state-tornado/?itid=lk_inline_manual_21 https://www.washingtonpost.com/photography/interactive/2021/...
    - colechristensen 5y ago
      Which are only there because tornadoes are extremely local events, you can be very close to the destruction and come out unscathed. Like it can reduce your house to toothpicks and leave your neighbors house entirely unharmed.
    - nerbert 5y ago
      Correct. Also I’m ignorant about tornadoes.
- dahart 5y ago
  That’s actually a really damn good point! I didn’t expect to see much from the video that wasn’t in the title, but I was struck by how complete the damage was in the tornado path; both sides of the building still there, and the middle so completely flattened, save the trucks.
  - kayodelycaon 5y ago
    Par for the course with tornados. Things stand that shouldn’t and thing that should have stood, don’t.
    - dahart 5y ago
      I’m not entirely sure what should or shouldn’t stand, but I guess I would speculate warehouse walls have a much higher surface area to mass ratio than cars, it certainly makes some sense to me that the building could go while the cars could stand, maybe especially if it’s less than EF4/5, no?
      - kayodelycaon 5y ago
        Any tornado can throw or flip a car.
- kayodelycaon 5y ago
  I grew up in the northern Midwest, where tornados happen semi-regularly. If you’re facing a tornado and in a vehicle, you’re supposed to abandon the vehicle and get to a ditch or some other low point that provides solid sideways protection and lay down as flat as you can. Tornados are weirdly destructive. Some things that get directly hit survive when they shouldn’t. Vehicles are not built to take the damage even a small tornado brings. https://www.spc.noaa.gov/faq/tornado/safety.html https://www.spc.noaa.gov/faq/tornado/safety.html
  - dahart 5y ago
    Aren’t there a lot of roads in the Midwest that have ditches for this reason? That page does seem to suggest that if you don’t have a ditch lower than the roadway nearby, staying low inside the car might be better than getting out, due to deadly flying debris? You’re toast if the vehicle takes flight, of course, but I guess statistically that’s not super common? * bewildered by the downvotes, but just to clarify, the NOAA page says explicitly: “In a car or truck: […] If you are caught by extreme winds or flying debris, park the car as quickly and safely as possible -- out of the traffic lanes. Stay in the car with the seat belt on. Put your head down below the windows; cover your head with your hands and a blanket, coat, or other cushion if possible.”
    - vidanay 5y ago
      No. The ditches are for water drainage and Dragula's.
    - colechristensen 5y ago
      High winds are not tornadoes, these are very different circumstances. You are trying not to get hit by a tornado, and if you do trying not to get relocated by one, or you’re trying not to get hit by something thrown by a tornado. A high wind isn’t going to throw a house at you or a shard of metal though a tree, a tornado will. There are small ones that are mostly harmless and will at most knock over some corn, it’s hard telling the difference between one of those and one that will pick you up and throw you a quarter mile. Absolutely do not hide in a vehicle from a tornado. You want to be low and near something well anchored. Inside a ditch, huddled up next to an overpass foundation, etc. A tornado either hits you it doesn’t, but few people in places where there are tornadoes are going to be dumb enough to be near one in a vehicle. You can avoid them while in your vehicle but even seasoned storm chasers still sometimes get taken. Source: Iowa raised, been a handful of meters away from a weather event that lifted and shifted a couple of buildings a foot off their foundations and peeled a section of roof from a barn. It may have been a microburst instead of a tornado, it was quite dark at the time. And no, the ditches are there for water drainage like the other poster said… though I’m not sure about vampires :)
- listless 5y ago
  A guy I knew in college was in a truck when a tornado hit and it threw that truck like an angry toddler with a hot wheels. They found the truck more than a mile away. The guy wasn’t even in it anymore. They found him in several locations. DO NOT get in a car for safety in a Tornado.
  - throwaway0a5e 5y ago
    Your comment is BS on the order of "I know a guy who didn't die in an accident because he wasn't wearing his seat-belt and was thrown clear" Vehicle cabins are far stronger than all but the most heavily built of above ground structures. They are expressly designed to be as survivable as possible in the kind of rollover accident that being tossed by wind is similar to. Furthermore, there's negligible chance of being killed by the car itself sustaining damage. This is very much not true about any sort of building. You might not get tossed in a stick build structure or steel warehouse style building but does that really matter if a wall or pallet rack falls on you? Of course a purpose built shelter or below ground level area is better but if those aren't available a car is your next best option.
  - pfdietz 5y ago
    There was another case at the University of Maryland some years back. Two women were in a car that got picked up and tossed over (or into?) some trees. They did not survive. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tornado_outbreak_of_September_24,_2001 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tornado_outbreak_of_September_... "Tragically, [the victims] had just left the building and were driving away when the funnel picked them up and carried the car several hundred yards, over one of the high-rise dorms, before dropping the car into the woods beyond." https://www.astro.umd.edu/~white/images/tornado/ https://www.astro.umd.edu/~white/images/tornado/ Submitted: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29522918 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29522918
- paulcole 5y ago
  Real “put armor on the tips of the wings energy.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias
- jcranmer 5y ago
  That is a very bad take. What you are seeing are only those trucks that survived--because the trucks that didn't survive are too badly mangled to identify as trucks. If you look at some of the later pictures in this photo deck (https://fox2now.com/news/illinois/photos-tornado-destroys-edwardsville-amazon-facility/ https://fox2now.com/news/illinois/photos-tornado-destroys-ed...), you can make out several trucks whose occupants would be dead. At least one truck appears to be sheared cleanly in two. The trucks that survived appear to have done so largely because they were out of the main debris field.
  - nerbert 5y ago
    Good to know, thanks for that!
  - MertsA 5y ago
    If you hid close to the floor in front of the driver's seat and covered your head you'd stand a very good chance of being able to walk out. Even though the back is gone on a lot of those vehicles that section is just large flat walls that aren't really structural and are only built to stand up to wind and rain while driving. Hide in the part of the vehicle made to protect occupants from oncoming traffic.
- actually_a_dog 5y ago
  Ideally, you want to be inside a windowless, concrete structure that's built into the ground. The closest thing like that that's typically available to people is a basement, which is why the advice is to go to the basement in a house that has one.
macintux 5y ago
Brutal night throughout the region. From the photos I've seen, the candle factory in Mayfield is the worst-hit; storm shelters can only do so much.
ohgodplsno 5y ago
Ah, so that's what Amazon means when they tell you your stuff is safer in the cloud.
- user-the-name 5y ago
  Not funny.
DonHopkins 5y ago
Rescuers were relieved to discover that many of the apparent injuries in the fulfillment center were only Wicked Witch of The East Legs Props. https://www.amazon.com/MyPartyShirt-Wicked-Witch-East-Legs/dp/B00T6KWA7Q https://www.amazon.com/MyPartyShirt-Wicked-Witch-East-Legs/d...
- ocdtrekkie 5y ago
  I'm not sure comedy is appropriate when at least two people died during this.
  - nitrogen 5y ago
    Humor is one of the ways humans process tragedy. Our modern culture's hostility to humor makes the emotional aftermath of tragedy worse by removing this coping mechanism.
    - macintux 5y ago
      When it comes to random people on the Internet making jokes about mass casualty events, it certainly feels more like callousness than coping.
    - cafard 5y ago
      Pain that one shares makes for great humor. Pain that one does not makes for uncomfortably bad humor.
mschuster91 5y ago
Dumb question, but is it even feasible to build such a building in a "tornado-proof" way? From how the damage looks, that warehouse must have only been metal walls and roofing instead of solid concrete or bricks...
- amznbad 5y ago
  Tornado proof? No. But you can build shelters (eg underground) to provide safety when the building overhead is destroyed.
- rufus_foreman 5y ago
  Financially, no it is not feasible. In the parts of the US where tornadoes are common, any particular spot is hit by a tornado on average once every 2,500 years. Of those tornadoes, 80% of them will be EF0 or EF1 intensity. An EF1 tornado will cause some roof damage and break windows but it won't tear the roof completely off or collapse walls. So it doesn't really make sense to spend money for something that happens once every few thousand years and is typically pretty minor when it happens. Especially given that it is usually completely predictable when it happens. Tornadoes don't suddenly appear out of a blue sky. There were warnings for the last few days that storms capable of producing tornadoes were likely for the areas that were hit last night. When the storms were going on, the TV networks interrupted programming and had the weather forecasters tell where the storms were and where they were headed next. Tornado sirens would have been going off long before the tornadoes hit. People would be getting texts on their phones warning them to take cover. If you're in a well-built structure, you're going to be fine in most tornadoes. Even for EF2 or EF3, you would most likely be OK even in a house without a basement if you took shelter in an interior closet on the ground floor. If you're in a mobile home, you're toast. For an EF4, you have a decent chance if you are in an interior room in a basement. So for the vast majority of tornadoes, which are already rare, there isn't much reason so spend money to protect property when there is already a way to protect lives. For EF5 tornadoes, it would be challenging to build anything other than an underground bunker to withstand them. They are incredibly rare, Wikipedia says 59 in the US since 1950. An EF5 tornado doesn't just level a house, it rips it from the foundation, sends it flying through the air and shatters it into a million pieces. Here's what an EF5 tornado does to a house: https://www.spc.noaa.gov/faq/tornado/f5.htm https://www.spc.noaa.gov/faq/tornado/f5.htm. It can rip the asphalt from a roadway and send it flying through the air. If you're in a building in the path of an EF5 tornado, you are probably best off following the advice my redneck step dad gave me when I was a kid for what to do in the case of a nuclear attack. He said to head down to the basement to an interior hallway, crouch down on the floor, tuck my head down between my knees as far as I could, and kiss my ass goodbye.
daenz 5y ago
I wonder what the insurance payout is for this? And the tax write-offs. Is it that simple, financially, just on a larger scale? Or is the scale too big for normal processes.
- dv_dt 5y ago
  At Amazons scale the best thing might be to self insure. Remember insurance is paying a premium on assets to prevent an loss that you might not be able to re-raise capital for. At a large enough scale, there little point to paying the premium because that one warehouse of capital loss is a drop in the overall budget.
  - humanistbot 5y ago
    Yup, pretty sure they self-insure. Some big car rental companies also self-insure, because they are at the scale where they already have their own repair shops, and the premiums would be more expensive than just paying out the damages themselves (edit: and then they can sell their own insurance to renters!)
  - db65edfc7996 5y ago
    Pardon my ignorance, but what does it mean to self-insure? Does that just mean you have enough money on hand to cover the losses if it happens?
    - pinko 5y ago
      Yes, exactly. Actuaries are quite good at their jobs, which means the cumulative lifetime cost of insurance generally exceeds the (cost of covering a loss * the probability of that loss), so the only three good reasons to buy insurance are: (1) you can't afford to cover the loss if it should occur (or maintaining/raising cash to cover it would be more expensive than the cost of insurance); (2) the peace of mind from knowing you won't have to worry about raising cash to cover a loss (even if you could cover it) is worth the cost of insurance to you, even if it's a bad deal financially; or (3) you know more than the insurance actuaries about your individual risk profile and have an edge (which is rare but can happen -- e.g., you know a specific product model is extraordinarily likely to fail and buy a cheap extended warranty for it). The first is the best and primary reason to buy insurance, the other two are corner cases.
amznbad 5y ago
Was there a severe storm warning in effect at the time? If so, what actions did Amazon take to reduce the exposure to this risk? Did Amazon have effective storm shelters on site? Did Amazon warn folks with enough time to reach shelters? My suspicions here are that Amazon again prioritized profit ahead of safety. But the people who pay the price are the individual workers. My heart goes out to all the families who lost loved ones or who are dealing with the anxiety of not knowing if they have.
geerlingguy 5y ago
It's just across the river from my hometown; the entire Metro St. Louis area had a few tornado sirens last night, as a wall of warnings swept across our region. It seems like the worst tornado was this one that ripped through the warehouse (other pictures show some trees that had foliage stripped); you don't mess around with a tornado warning. It can drop pretty much anywhere along a storm front, or even sometimes in the middle or tail end of a front, especially when all the atmospheric conditions aligned like they did yesterday. There was a much larger storm that seemed to have a 200 mi or so path through Arkansas, Missouri, Kansas and I think Ohio(?) last night. Some of these storms are still getting severe warnings this morning!
- throwawayboise 5y ago
  When I was a kid, a "Tornado Warning" meant that a tornado had been spotted and was something you took pretty seriously. There was another advisory called a "Tornado Watch" that meant conditions were favorable for tornados to develop. Now, it seems that every semi-heavy thunderstorm comes with a "Tornado Warning" based on radar returns and other metrics. They happen so often it's hard to get too worked up about them. Another case of boy who cried wolf.
  - dredmorbius 5y ago
    Your understanding is incorrect. A WARNING means a funnel has been sighted or detected (e.g., by weather radar). A WATCH means tornadic conditions are highly favourable. From NOAA: What is the difference between a Tornado WATCH and a Tornado WARNING? A Tornado WATCH is issued by the NOAA Storm Prediction Center meteorologists who watch the weather 24/7 across the entire U.S. for weather conditions that are favorable for tornadoes and severe weather. A watch can cover parts of a state or several states. Watch and prepare for severe weather and stay tuned to NOAA Weather Radio to know when warnings are issued. A Tornado WARNING is issued by your local NOAA National Weather Service Forecast Office meteorologists who watch the weather 24/7 over a designated area. This means a tornado has been reported by spotters or indicated by radar and there is a serious threat to life and property to those in the path of the tornado. A tornado warning indicates that you should ACT NOW to find safe shelter! A warning can cover parts of counties or several counties in the path of danger. https://www.nssl.noaa.gov/education/svrwx101/tornadoes/ https://www.nssl.noaa.gov/education/svrwx101/tornadoes/ It's quite likely that either detection (and so sightings) has improved, or that tornados are now more prevalent in actuality. There's good evidence for both.
Tempest1981 5y ago
For those unfamiliar with the US Midwest and Edwardsville... here is a map of where the tornado hit. Looks like 2 swaths of destruction: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/12/11/us/tornado-maps-damage.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/12/11/us/tornado-ma... I know it's paywall'd, but I couldn't find any any other media outlet with a simple damage map like this.
- Tempest1981 5y ago
  It's interesting that Google can snapshot a few tiles from the nytimes graphics, but the archive sites cannot: https://images.app.goo.gl/2ME6uXYXHCATVGYT6 https://images.app.goo.gl/2ME6uXYXHCATVGYT6
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
- fennecfoxen 5y ago
  Why is Amazon on Hacker News? It's just some dumb online store.
ranrotx 5y ago
Why is this on Hacker News? It’s obviously a delivery station, not any kind of data center based on the trucks that were inside the facility in the video.
almog 5y ago
At least one of the people who died inside the facility was a 29 years old maintenance worker. I do not know how predictable tornadoes such as this are, but I won't be surprised if these deaths could have been prevented. Source: https://twitter.com/AmeliaMtv/status/1469634726558412800 https://twitter.com/AmeliaMtv/status/1469634726558412800
- almog 5y ago
  And unsurprisingly, NBC News quoted a women working at a nearby Amazon facility confirming that they never had any tornado drills nor had they sheltered in place for any of the warnings they've had in the past: https://www.nbcnews.com/business/business-news/amazon-worker-deaths-tornados-raise-questions-tornado-training-cellpho-rcna8570 https://www.nbcnews.com/business/business-news/amazon-worker...
- kordlessagain 5y ago
  There is very little reason for anyone in that building dying! So sad!
  - Jerrrry 5y ago
    Beside the tornado's direct hit?
    - CaliforniaKarl 5y ago
      No. Buildings in Tornado-prone areas must be built with tornado shelters. Those are rooms within the building that are designed to withstand both a hit from a tornado, and the debris. To be clear, the entire building does not need to be a tornado shelter. Just enough space within the building to hold its occupants.
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
    - derekjdanserl 5y ago
voidfunc 5y ago
Interesting logistics problem, I wonder how good Amazon is about re-routing deliveries from other warehouses if a local one goes down? This is bad time of the year to be losing a distribution center.
- smashed 5y ago
  And is it a good time of the year to die inside an amazon warehouse? I am sure 99% of people waiting for their deliveries with any kind of human compassion will understand the situation.
  - SQueeeeeL 5y ago
    Wait, what country do you live in? Can I move there? I feel like most Americans don't view the human component of any of their transactions anymore, and have relegated nearly everything to out of sight, out of mind.
    - smashed 5y ago
      You got me... Canada ;)
- jedberg 5y ago
  While you bring up an interesting question, it's important to note that people died in that building. Perhaps some compassion is in order. To answer your question though, unless the item someone ordered is unique and only stored in that warehouse, they will probably just mark the warehouse as down and the system will simply route around it and increase delivery estimates for the people who were served by that warehouse. They will probably redeploy the surviving trucks to nearby warehouses to handle the load.
  - Kye 5y ago
    I'll be honest: I'm not sure what the appropriate way to show compassion is here if it's not the purpose of the comment. Does every person commenting on something adjacent to the situation need to display compassion in this (still unknown) way? Asking seriously. I want those complete strangers to not be in situations where they could die, and I want no one to die the same way in the future because someone did an engineering and made it safer. But they are people I don't/didn't know. Anything I could think of to say would feel as useless as "thoughts and prayers."
lettergram 5y ago
I understand the concern about tornados, but living in the Midwest I gotta be honest I have zero concerns. Tornados are rare and might only be 50-200ft wide. I’m much more concerned about general high winds. I live in a neighborhood amongst the fields and we regularly get 50-70 mph sustained winds with 70-90 mph gusts. We get these storms 2-4 times a year. Last night we had 40 mph winds with 55mph gusts. To put it in perspective I’ve watched my neighbors fence blow apart and slam cars and neighbors windows/walls. Watched large play sets roll down the street, etc. our HOA had to put in rules about using iron / aluminum fences for this reason. A couple years ago we had a thunderstorm & snow storm with high winds and temperatures were just right so everything built up a nice 1-2 inches of ice so power went out. Again way worse than tornadoes.
- cryptoz 5y ago
  > everything built up a nice 1-2 inches of ice so power went out. Again way worse than tornadoes. Somewhere around 100 people died just last night in these tornados. I think your couple inches of ice and power outage and fences in cars is not so bad compared to these tornados last night.
  - oh_sigh 5y ago
    In terms of destructiveness, yes the tornados are worse. But OP is saying that in terms of frequency*destructiveness*area, high winds are more impactful to his life.
- almost_usual 5y ago
  Hail also sucks
  - _fat_santa 5y ago
    One of my old bosses bought a Subaru, she said the night she brought it come they had a massive hailstorm and when she filed an insurance claim they ended up totaling the car. I guess the only silver lining is there are plenty of "salvage title" cars out here that are salvage just because of hail. Great for anyone that needs a car and doesn't care about dents.
black_13 5y ago
Even god hates Amazon .
nodesocket 5y ago
I live in Nashville (moved from San Francisco in 2018) and this is the second Tornado scare I’ve had. The first in March of 2020 did significant damage in my last neighborhood of Germantown. The weather here in Tennessee still amazes and frankly scares me a bit. I’m just not used to it coming from California. Thankfully this time no real damage to my home or West side neighborhood.
mmastrac 5y ago
Non-Fox, alternate source with drone footage, for those with a preference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ROXs0F7gcc4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ROXs0F7gcc4 EDIT: Oops, wrong tornado (same day, different state). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wsBzadyNWRY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wsBzadyNWRY has a view of the Tornado from a local nearby, however.
- almost_usual 5y ago
  This is the tornado that hit Kentucky not Edwardsville Illinois.
- tpmx 5y ago
  Doesn't it seem like the cars in that (horrible) path of destruction survived better than the buildings?
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - throwawayboise 5y ago
    Well a modern car is a steel safety cage on wheels. It's designed and tested to withstand impacts, rollovers, etc. while keep the occupants safe (or at least, not crushed).
    - tpmx 5y ago
      It was meant in reference to this comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29521461 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29521461
- Kye 5y ago
  As far as I know Fox TV stations have no connection to the Fox with the cable news channel aside from being part of the same company in the past. edit: https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-news/fox-affiliates-we-are-not-fox-news-channel https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-news/fox-affiliates-we-are-...
Copernicron 5y ago
Are tornadoes a common occurrence in December? We don't get them where I'm from and I can't remember hearing about anything like this before. My heart goes out to the families of those involved. This would be devastating at the best of times.
- actually_a_dog 5y ago
  Historically, tornado season is from March through June, but, they can happen any day of the year.
- enraged_camel 5y ago
  No, tornadoes are definitely very rare in December, when it tends to be too cold for them to form. Continental US has been experiencing a very unusual heat-wave across the board though, and it has been causing havoc in normal weather patterns.
  - cthalupa 5y ago
    >No, tornadoes are definitely very rare in December, when it tends to be too cold for them to form. I would not go so far as to say 'Very rare.' Even before we started seeing more major impact to our climate due to global warming, winter tornado outbreaks were roughly ~10% of all tornado outbreaks. https://www.spc.noaa.gov/publications/galway/winter.pdf https://www.spc.noaa.gov/publications/galway/winter.pdf Spring and fall are definitely the most active seasons for tornados but they occur often enough year round that I think that, at least for the US, you can't say tornados are rarer than 'uncommon' for any time of year.
actually_a_dog 5y ago
Not only did it hit an Amazon warehouse, it traveled 200 miles across 4 states in 4 hours, which is a record. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/weather/quad-state-tornado-crossed-four-states-four-hours-leaving-trail-death-rcna8465 https://www.nbcnews.com/news/weather/quad-state-tornado-cros... Edit: Yes, this is the same tornado: https://meaww.com/tornado-warning-amazon-warehouse-edwardsville-collapse https://meaww.com/tornado-warning-amazon-warehouse-edwardsvi... Edit 2: Hmm. Maybe not. Looks like I was wrong initially, and the fact this tornado hit the same night as an Amazon warehouse got leveled by another tornado is just the world's shittiest coincidence.
- lightlyused 5y ago
  Different tornado.
- almost_usual 5y ago
  This isn't the same tornado that hit Edwardsville Illinois. Edit: https://twitter.com/ellenbacca/status/1469542791659368449?s=20 https://twitter.com/ellenbacca/status/1469542791659368449?s=... St. Louis is ~200 miles to the north (Edwardsville is an Illinois suburb in metro east). The tornado you're referencing tracked from Arkansas east, different tornado. Another source https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/12/11/us/tornado-maps-damage.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/12/11/us/tornado-ma...
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- Tarball10 5y ago
  It's not uncommon for a severe storm system like this to produce multiple tornados. The "quad-state tornado" was farther to the south, cutting across the bootheel of Missouri, while the one that hit the Amazon warehouse was more north, near St. Louis.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
jimt1234 5y ago
Mentions of "tornado sirens" in these comments are triggering bad memories from my childhood in the Midwest. The house I grew up in had a tornado siren on our property, probably about 100 feet from my bedroom window. It was so f--king loud!!! And it felt like it last forever. Ugh!
disabled 5y ago
Amazon is going to get sued hardcore, guaranteed. The issue is that nobody had to die. Even kids’ summer camps in tornado prone zones have this figured out. The summer camp I went to had 2 rooms in the camp’s gym that were formal tornado shelters. The gym, with these tornado shelter rooms, were built in 2001. The entire camp (300+ people) could fit in these rooms. Everyone could technically sleep in there too, but obviously they would split us up into boys/girls rooms and the counselors would still be watching us the whole time. The 2 rooms themselves were basically a 12” enclosure (including the ceilings). There were also concrete pillars in the room to reinforce the structure. During normal times we used them for various activities. But, at least during a couple of summers, we had to evacuate (from the cabins or wherever) there. The program staff (people in charge of the camp) were always monitoring the meteorological radar 24/7. This was in North Texas, which is tornado alley. The camp was an hour north of the Dallas/Ft. Worth metroplex.
- MrFoof 5y ago
  Amazon warehouses are Tilt-Up Construction. Basically 4-to-6-inch thick cast concrete panels on a grid on metal tubes as joists. Support pillars with basic trusses, and a roof tying it together. You lose a ton of stability once that roof is gone. You lose a truss or a few pillars, and I'd imagine it came down like a house of concrete cards very, very quickly after the first wall section fell. It has no chance against a tornado direct hit. You need a dedicated shelter structure for that.
  - ranrotx 5y ago
    You know what else is tilt-up? Most big box stores. Not sure why Amazon is being singled out here as I’m sure this building complied with all local building codes.
todd8 5y ago
Strangely, tornados are largely a phenomenon a of the USA. Canada (the worlds second biggest country), has about 100 tornadoes per year putting it in second place; the US has 1200. See [1]. The most powerful tornados are the terrifying F5 category ones. The US has had 59 of those. Throughout the rest of the world, no other country has had more than two. See [2]. More precisely, most of these F5 tornadoes have happened in just a few states, Iowa, Texas, Oklahoma, and Kansas have had six each, and Alabama has had seven. See [3]. [1] https://the-weather-station.com/countries-with-most-tornadoes/ https://the-weather-station.com/countries-with-most-tornadoe... [2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_F5_and_EF5_tornadoes https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_F5_and_EF5_tornadoes [3] https://www.spc.noaa.gov/faq/tornado/f5torns.html https://www.spc.noaa.gov/faq/tornado/f5torns.html

121 points by kordlessagain 5y ago

"If you're ever in such a facility and a tornado hits, hide in a truck" is my take from this video. Edit: it’s a bad take, read below.

kodah 5y ago
That's an absolutely terrible idea. Trucks are built with thin metal and probably have objects inside, not to mention could be easily lifted off the ground and thrown. In areas that are susceptible to tornados buildings are usually supposed to be built with at least one or two areas that have no windows and reinforced surroundings to hide when tornado alarms go off.
- wyldfire 5y ago
  Yes there definitely was an interior bathroom designed as tornado shelter in this building. While it may or may not have stayed intact, it was your best chance at survival.
- scrose 5y ago
  I’m pretty sure their comment was based on the almost flawless looking trucks in the rubble…
  - jeffbee 5y ago
    That is interesting but for all we know there was another row of trucks in the middle part that got picked up and thrown for miles. My Oklahoma high school took a direct hit from a tornado and cars in the parking lot were found wadded up all over town. If a tornado can pick up an Oldsmobile it can pick up a Sprinter. Refer to these photos of what a tornado does to a truck. https://www.washingtonpost.com/photography/interactive/2021/see-damage-caused-by-deadly-quad-state-tornado/?itid=lk_inline_manual_21 https://www.washingtonpost.com/photography/interactive/2021/...
  - colechristensen 5y ago
    Which are only there because tornadoes are extremely local events, you can be very close to the destruction and come out unscathed. Like it can reduce your house to toothpicks and leave your neighbors house entirely unharmed.
  - nerbert 5y ago
    Correct. Also I’m ignorant about tornadoes.
dahart 5y ago
That’s actually a really damn good point! I didn’t expect to see much from the video that wasn’t in the title, but I was struck by how complete the damage was in the tornado path; both sides of the building still there, and the middle so completely flattened, save the trucks.
- kayodelycaon 5y ago
  Par for the course with tornados. Things stand that shouldn’t and thing that should have stood, don’t.
  - dahart 5y ago
    I’m not entirely sure what should or shouldn’t stand, but I guess I would speculate warehouse walls have a much higher surface area to mass ratio than cars, it certainly makes some sense to me that the building could go while the cars could stand, maybe especially if it’s less than EF4/5, no?
    - kayodelycaon 5y ago
      Any tornado can throw or flip a car.
kayodelycaon 5y ago
I grew up in the northern Midwest, where tornados happen semi-regularly. If you’re facing a tornado and in a vehicle, you’re supposed to abandon the vehicle and get to a ditch or some other low point that provides solid sideways protection and lay down as flat as you can. Tornados are weirdly destructive. Some things that get directly hit survive when they shouldn’t. Vehicles are not built to take the damage even a small tornado brings. https://www.spc.noaa.gov/faq/tornado/safety.html https://www.spc.noaa.gov/faq/tornado/safety.html
- dahart 5y ago
  Aren’t there a lot of roads in the Midwest that have ditches for this reason? That page does seem to suggest that if you don’t have a ditch lower than the roadway nearby, staying low inside the car might be better than getting out, due to deadly flying debris? You’re toast if the vehicle takes flight, of course, but I guess statistically that’s not super common? * bewildered by the downvotes, but just to clarify, the NOAA page says explicitly: “In a car or truck: […] If you are caught by extreme winds or flying debris, park the car as quickly and safely as possible -- out of the traffic lanes. Stay in the car with the seat belt on. Put your head down below the windows; cover your head with your hands and a blanket, coat, or other cushion if possible.”
  - vidanay 5y ago
    No. The ditches are for water drainage and Dragula's.
  - colechristensen 5y ago
    High winds are not tornadoes, these are very different circumstances. You are trying not to get hit by a tornado, and if you do trying not to get relocated by one, or you’re trying not to get hit by something thrown by a tornado. A high wind isn’t going to throw a house at you or a shard of metal though a tree, a tornado will. There are small ones that are mostly harmless and will at most knock over some corn, it’s hard telling the difference between one of those and one that will pick you up and throw you a quarter mile. Absolutely do not hide in a vehicle from a tornado. You want to be low and near something well anchored. Inside a ditch, huddled up next to an overpass foundation, etc. A tornado either hits you it doesn’t, but few people in places where there are tornadoes are going to be dumb enough to be near one in a vehicle. You can avoid them while in your vehicle but even seasoned storm chasers still sometimes get taken. Source: Iowa raised, been a handful of meters away from a weather event that lifted and shifted a couple of buildings a foot off their foundations and peeled a section of roof from a barn. It may have been a microburst instead of a tornado, it was quite dark at the time. And no, the ditches are there for water drainage like the other poster said… though I’m not sure about vampires :)
listless 5y ago
A guy I knew in college was in a truck when a tornado hit and it threw that truck like an angry toddler with a hot wheels. They found the truck more than a mile away. The guy wasn’t even in it anymore. They found him in several locations. DO NOT get in a car for safety in a Tornado.
- throwaway0a5e 5y ago
  Your comment is BS on the order of "I know a guy who didn't die in an accident because he wasn't wearing his seat-belt and was thrown clear" Vehicle cabins are far stronger than all but the most heavily built of above ground structures. They are expressly designed to be as survivable as possible in the kind of rollover accident that being tossed by wind is similar to. Furthermore, there's negligible chance of being killed by the car itself sustaining damage. This is very much not true about any sort of building. You might not get tossed in a stick build structure or steel warehouse style building but does that really matter if a wall or pallet rack falls on you? Of course a purpose built shelter or below ground level area is better but if those aren't available a car is your next best option.
- pfdietz 5y ago
  There was another case at the University of Maryland some years back. Two women were in a car that got picked up and tossed over (or into?) some trees. They did not survive. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tornado_outbreak_of_September_24,_2001 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tornado_outbreak_of_September_... "Tragically, [the victims] had just left the building and were driving away when the funnel picked them up and carried the car several hundred yards, over one of the high-rise dorms, before dropping the car into the woods beyond." https://www.astro.umd.edu/~white/images/tornado/ https://www.astro.umd.edu/~white/images/tornado/ Submitted: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29522918 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29522918
paulcole 5y ago
Real “put armor on the tips of the wings energy.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias
jcranmer 5y ago
That is a very bad take. What you are seeing are only those trucks that survived--because the trucks that didn't survive are too badly mangled to identify as trucks. If you look at some of the later pictures in this photo deck (https://fox2now.com/news/illinois/photos-tornado-destroys-edwardsville-amazon-facility/ https://fox2now.com/news/illinois/photos-tornado-destroys-ed...), you can make out several trucks whose occupants would be dead. At least one truck appears to be sheared cleanly in two. The trucks that survived appear to have done so largely because they were out of the main debris field.
- nerbert 5y ago
  Good to know, thanks for that!
- MertsA 5y ago
  If you hid close to the floor in front of the driver's seat and covered your head you'd stand a very good chance of being able to walk out. Even though the back is gone on a lot of those vehicles that section is just large flat walls that aren't really structural and are only built to stand up to wind and rain while driving. Hide in the part of the vehicle made to protect occupants from oncoming traffic.
actually_a_dog 5y ago
Ideally, you want to be inside a windowless, concrete structure that's built into the ground. The closest thing like that that's typically available to people is a basement, which is why the advice is to go to the basement in a house that has one.

macintux 5y ago

Brutal night throughout the region. From the photos I've seen, the candle factory in Mayfield is the worst-hit; storm shelters can only do so much.

ohgodplsno 5y ago

Ah, so that's what Amazon means when they tell you your stuff is safer in the cloud.

user-the-name 5y ago
Not funny.

DonHopkins 5y ago

Rescuers were relieved to discover that many of the apparent injuries in the fulfillment center were only Wicked Witch of The East Legs Props. https://www.amazon.com/MyPartyShirt-Wicked-Witch-East-Legs/dp/B00T6KWA7Q https://www.amazon.com/MyPartyShirt-Wicked-Witch-East-Legs/d...

ocdtrekkie 5y ago
I'm not sure comedy is appropriate when at least two people died during this.
- nitrogen 5y ago
  Humor is one of the ways humans process tragedy. Our modern culture's hostility to humor makes the emotional aftermath of tragedy worse by removing this coping mechanism.
  - macintux 5y ago
    When it comes to random people on the Internet making jokes about mass casualty events, it certainly feels more like callousness than coping.
  - cafard 5y ago
    Pain that one shares makes for great humor. Pain that one does not makes for uncomfortably bad humor.

mschuster91 5y ago

Dumb question, but is it even feasible to build such a building in a "tornado-proof" way? From how the damage looks, that warehouse must have only been metal walls and roofing instead of solid concrete or bricks...

amznbad 5y ago
Tornado proof? No. But you can build shelters (eg underground) to provide safety when the building overhead is destroyed.
rufus_foreman 5y ago
Financially, no it is not feasible. In the parts of the US where tornadoes are common, any particular spot is hit by a tornado on average once every 2,500 years. Of those tornadoes, 80% of them will be EF0 or EF1 intensity. An EF1 tornado will cause some roof damage and break windows but it won't tear the roof completely off or collapse walls. So it doesn't really make sense to spend money for something that happens once every few thousand years and is typically pretty minor when it happens. Especially given that it is usually completely predictable when it happens. Tornadoes don't suddenly appear out of a blue sky. There were warnings for the last few days that storms capable of producing tornadoes were likely for the areas that were hit last night. When the storms were going on, the TV networks interrupted programming and had the weather forecasters tell where the storms were and where they were headed next. Tornado sirens would have been going off long before the tornadoes hit. People would be getting texts on their phones warning them to take cover. If you're in a well-built structure, you're going to be fine in most tornadoes. Even for EF2 or EF3, you would most likely be OK even in a house without a basement if you took shelter in an interior closet on the ground floor. If you're in a mobile home, you're toast. For an EF4, you have a decent chance if you are in an interior room in a basement. So for the vast majority of tornadoes, which are already rare, there isn't much reason so spend money to protect property when there is already a way to protect lives. For EF5 tornadoes, it would be challenging to build anything other than an underground bunker to withstand them. They are incredibly rare, Wikipedia says 59 in the US since 1950. An EF5 tornado doesn't just level a house, it rips it from the foundation, sends it flying through the air and shatters it into a million pieces. Here's what an EF5 tornado does to a house: https://www.spc.noaa.gov/faq/tornado/f5.htm https://www.spc.noaa.gov/faq/tornado/f5.htm. It can rip the asphalt from a roadway and send it flying through the air. If you're in a building in the path of an EF5 tornado, you are probably best off following the advice my redneck step dad gave me when I was a kid for what to do in the case of a nuclear attack. He said to head down to the basement to an interior hallway, crouch down on the floor, tuck my head down between my knees as far as I could, and kiss my ass goodbye.

daenz 5y ago

I wonder what the insurance payout is for this? And the tax write-offs. Is it that simple, financially, just on a larger scale? Or is the scale too big for normal processes.

dv_dt 5y ago
At Amazons scale the best thing might be to self insure. Remember insurance is paying a premium on assets to prevent an loss that you might not be able to re-raise capital for. At a large enough scale, there little point to paying the premium because that one warehouse of capital loss is a drop in the overall budget.
- humanistbot 5y ago
  Yup, pretty sure they self-insure. Some big car rental companies also self-insure, because they are at the scale where they already have their own repair shops, and the premiums would be more expensive than just paying out the damages themselves (edit: and then they can sell their own insurance to renters!)
- db65edfc7996 5y ago
  Pardon my ignorance, but what does it mean to self-insure? Does that just mean you have enough money on hand to cover the losses if it happens?
  - pinko 5y ago
    Yes, exactly. Actuaries are quite good at their jobs, which means the cumulative lifetime cost of insurance generally exceeds the (cost of covering a loss * the probability of that loss), so the only three good reasons to buy insurance are: (1) you can't afford to cover the loss if it should occur (or maintaining/raising cash to cover it would be more expensive than the cost of insurance); (2) the peace of mind from knowing you won't have to worry about raising cash to cover a loss (even if you could cover it) is worth the cost of insurance to you, even if it's a bad deal financially; or (3) you know more than the insurance actuaries about your individual risk profile and have an edge (which is rare but can happen -- e.g., you know a specific product model is extraordinarily likely to fail and buy a cheap extended warranty for it). The first is the best and primary reason to buy insurance, the other two are corner cases.

amznbad 5y ago

Was there a severe storm warning in effect at the time? If so, what actions did Amazon take to reduce the exposure to this risk? Did Amazon have effective storm shelters on site? Did Amazon warn folks with enough time to reach shelters? My suspicions here are that Amazon again prioritized profit ahead of safety. But the people who pay the price are the individual workers. My heart goes out to all the families who lost loved ones or who are dealing with the anxiety of not knowing if they have.

geerlingguy 5y ago

It's just across the river from my hometown; the entire Metro St. Louis area had a few tornado sirens last night, as a wall of warnings swept across our region. It seems like the worst tornado was this one that ripped through the warehouse (other pictures show some trees that had foliage stripped); you don't mess around with a tornado warning. It can drop pretty much anywhere along a storm front, or even sometimes in the middle or tail end of a front, especially when all the atmospheric conditions aligned like they did yesterday. There was a much larger storm that seemed to have a 200 mi or so path through Arkansas, Missouri, Kansas and I think Ohio(?) last night. Some of these storms are still getting severe warnings this morning!

throwawayboise 5y ago
When I was a kid, a "Tornado Warning" meant that a tornado had been spotted and was something you took pretty seriously. There was another advisory called a "Tornado Watch" that meant conditions were favorable for tornados to develop. Now, it seems that every semi-heavy thunderstorm comes with a "Tornado Warning" based on radar returns and other metrics. They happen so often it's hard to get too worked up about them. Another case of boy who cried wolf.
- dredmorbius 5y ago
  Your understanding is incorrect. A WARNING means a funnel has been sighted or detected (e.g., by weather radar). A WATCH means tornadic conditions are highly favourable. From NOAA: What is the difference between a Tornado WATCH and a Tornado WARNING? A Tornado WATCH is issued by the NOAA Storm Prediction Center meteorologists who watch the weather 24/7 across the entire U.S. for weather conditions that are favorable for tornadoes and severe weather. A watch can cover parts of a state or several states. Watch and prepare for severe weather and stay tuned to NOAA Weather Radio to know when warnings are issued. A Tornado WARNING is issued by your local NOAA National Weather Service Forecast Office meteorologists who watch the weather 24/7 over a designated area. This means a tornado has been reported by spotters or indicated by radar and there is a serious threat to life and property to those in the path of the tornado. A tornado warning indicates that you should ACT NOW to find safe shelter! A warning can cover parts of counties or several counties in the path of danger. https://www.nssl.noaa.gov/education/svrwx101/tornadoes/ https://www.nssl.noaa.gov/education/svrwx101/tornadoes/ It's quite likely that either detection (and so sightings) has improved, or that tornados are now more prevalent in actuality. There's good evidence for both.

Tempest1981 5y ago

For those unfamiliar with the US Midwest and Edwardsville... here is a map of where the tornado hit. Looks like 2 swaths of destruction: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/12/11/us/tornado-maps-damage.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/12/11/us/tornado-ma... I know it's paywall'd, but I couldn't find any any other media outlet with a simple damage map like this.

Tempest1981 5y ago
It's interesting that Google can snapshot a few tiles from the nytimes graphics, but the archive sites cannot: https://images.app.goo.gl/2ME6uXYXHCATVGYT6 https://images.app.goo.gl/2ME6uXYXHCATVGYT6

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

fennecfoxen 5y ago
Why is Amazon on Hacker News? It's just some dumb online store.

ranrotx 5y ago

Why is this on Hacker News? It’s obviously a delivery station, not any kind of data center based on the trucks that were inside the facility in the video.

almog 5y ago

At least one of the people who died inside the facility was a 29 years old maintenance worker. I do not know how predictable tornadoes such as this are, but I won't be surprised if these deaths could have been prevented. Source: https://twitter.com/AmeliaMtv/status/1469634726558412800 https://twitter.com/AmeliaMtv/status/1469634726558412800

almog 5y ago
And unsurprisingly, NBC News quoted a women working at a nearby Amazon facility confirming that they never had any tornado drills nor had they sheltered in place for any of the warnings they've had in the past: https://www.nbcnews.com/business/business-news/amazon-worker-deaths-tornados-raise-questions-tornado-training-cellpho-rcna8570 https://www.nbcnews.com/business/business-news/amazon-worker...
kordlessagain 5y ago
There is very little reason for anyone in that building dying! So sad!
- Jerrrry 5y ago
  Beside the tornado's direct hit?
  - CaliforniaKarl 5y ago
    No. Buildings in Tornado-prone areas must be built with tornado shelters. Those are rooms within the building that are designed to withstand both a hit from a tornado, and the debris. To be clear, the entire building does not need to be a tornado shelter. Just enough space within the building to hold its occupants.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
  - derekjdanserl 5y ago

voidfunc 5y ago

Interesting logistics problem, I wonder how good Amazon is about re-routing deliveries from other warehouses if a local one goes down? This is bad time of the year to be losing a distribution center.

smashed 5y ago
And is it a good time of the year to die inside an amazon warehouse? I am sure 99% of people waiting for their deliveries with any kind of human compassion will understand the situation.
- SQueeeeeL 5y ago
  Wait, what country do you live in? Can I move there? I feel like most Americans don't view the human component of any of their transactions anymore, and have relegated nearly everything to out of sight, out of mind.
  - smashed 5y ago
    You got me... Canada ;)
jedberg 5y ago
While you bring up an interesting question, it's important to note that people died in that building. Perhaps some compassion is in order. To answer your question though, unless the item someone ordered is unique and only stored in that warehouse, they will probably just mark the warehouse as down and the system will simply route around it and increase delivery estimates for the people who were served by that warehouse. They will probably redeploy the surviving trucks to nearby warehouses to handle the load.
- Kye 5y ago
  I'll be honest: I'm not sure what the appropriate way to show compassion is here if it's not the purpose of the comment. Does every person commenting on something adjacent to the situation need to display compassion in this (still unknown) way? Asking seriously. I want those complete strangers to not be in situations where they could die, and I want no one to die the same way in the future because someone did an engineering and made it safer. But they are people I don't/didn't know. Anything I could think of to say would feel as useless as "thoughts and prayers."

lettergram 5y ago

I understand the concern about tornados, but living in the Midwest I gotta be honest I have zero concerns. Tornados are rare and might only be 50-200ft wide. I’m much more concerned about general high winds. I live in a neighborhood amongst the fields and we regularly get 50-70 mph sustained winds with 70-90 mph gusts. We get these storms 2-4 times a year. Last night we had 40 mph winds with 55mph gusts. To put it in perspective I’ve watched my neighbors fence blow apart and slam cars and neighbors windows/walls. Watched large play sets roll down the street, etc. our HOA had to put in rules about using iron / aluminum fences for this reason. A couple years ago we had a thunderstorm & snow storm with high winds and temperatures were just right so everything built up a nice 1-2 inches of ice so power went out. Again way worse than tornadoes.

cryptoz 5y ago
> everything built up a nice 1-2 inches of ice so power went out. Again way worse than tornadoes. Somewhere around 100 people died just last night in these tornados. I think your couple inches of ice and power outage and fences in cars is not so bad compared to these tornados last night.
- oh_sigh 5y ago
  In terms of destructiveness, yes the tornados are worse. But OP is saying that in terms of frequency*destructiveness*area, high winds are more impactful to his life.
almost_usual 5y ago
Hail also sucks
- _fat_santa 5y ago
  One of my old bosses bought a Subaru, she said the night she brought it come they had a massive hailstorm and when she filed an insurance claim they ended up totaling the car. I guess the only silver lining is there are plenty of "salvage title" cars out here that are salvage just because of hail. Great for anyone that needs a car and doesn't care about dents.

black_13 5y ago

Even god hates Amazon .

nodesocket 5y ago

I live in Nashville (moved from San Francisco in 2018) and this is the second Tornado scare I’ve had. The first in March of 2020 did significant damage in my last neighborhood of Germantown. The weather here in Tennessee still amazes and frankly scares me a bit. I’m just not used to it coming from California. Thankfully this time no real damage to my home or West side neighborhood.

mmastrac 5y ago

Non-Fox, alternate source with drone footage, for those with a preference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ROXs0F7gcc4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ROXs0F7gcc4 EDIT: Oops, wrong tornado (same day, different state). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wsBzadyNWRY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wsBzadyNWRY has a view of the Tornado from a local nearby, however.

almost_usual 5y ago
This is the tornado that hit Kentucky not Edwardsville Illinois.
tpmx 5y ago
Doesn't it seem like the cars in that (horrible) path of destruction survived better than the buildings?
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- throwawayboise 5y ago
  Well a modern car is a steel safety cage on wheels. It's designed and tested to withstand impacts, rollovers, etc. while keep the occupants safe (or at least, not crushed).
  - tpmx 5y ago
    It was meant in reference to this comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29521461 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29521461
Kye 5y ago
As far as I know Fox TV stations have no connection to the Fox with the cable news channel aside from being part of the same company in the past. edit: https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-news/fox-affiliates-we-are-not-fox-news-channel https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-news/fox-affiliates-we-are-...

Copernicron 5y ago

Are tornadoes a common occurrence in December? We don't get them where I'm from and I can't remember hearing about anything like this before. My heart goes out to the families of those involved. This would be devastating at the best of times.

actually_a_dog 5y ago
Historically, tornado season is from March through June, but, they can happen any day of the year.
enraged_camel 5y ago
No, tornadoes are definitely very rare in December, when it tends to be too cold for them to form. Continental US has been experiencing a very unusual heat-wave across the board though, and it has been causing havoc in normal weather patterns.
- cthalupa 5y ago
  >No, tornadoes are definitely very rare in December, when it tends to be too cold for them to form. I would not go so far as to say 'Very rare.' Even before we started seeing more major impact to our climate due to global warming, winter tornado outbreaks were roughly ~10% of all tornado outbreaks. https://www.spc.noaa.gov/publications/galway/winter.pdf https://www.spc.noaa.gov/publications/galway/winter.pdf Spring and fall are definitely the most active seasons for tornados but they occur often enough year round that I think that, at least for the US, you can't say tornados are rarer than 'uncommon' for any time of year.

actually_a_dog 5y ago

Not only did it hit an Amazon warehouse, it traveled 200 miles across 4 states in 4 hours, which is a record. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/weather/quad-state-tornado-crossed-four-states-four-hours-leaving-trail-death-rcna8465 https://www.nbcnews.com/news/weather/quad-state-tornado-cros... Edit: Yes, this is the same tornado: https://meaww.com/tornado-warning-amazon-warehouse-edwardsville-collapse https://meaww.com/tornado-warning-amazon-warehouse-edwardsvi... Edit 2: Hmm. Maybe not. Looks like I was wrong initially, and the fact this tornado hit the same night as an Amazon warehouse got leveled by another tornado is just the world's shittiest coincidence.

lightlyused 5y ago
Different tornado.
almost_usual 5y ago
This isn't the same tornado that hit Edwardsville Illinois. Edit: https://twitter.com/ellenbacca/status/1469542791659368449?s=20 https://twitter.com/ellenbacca/status/1469542791659368449?s=... St. Louis is ~200 miles to the north (Edwardsville is an Illinois suburb in metro east). The tornado you're referencing tracked from Arkansas east, different tornado. Another source https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/12/11/us/tornado-maps-damage.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/12/11/us/tornado-ma...
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
Tarball10 5y ago
It's not uncommon for a severe storm system like this to produce multiple tornados. The "quad-state tornado" was farther to the south, cutting across the bootheel of Missouri, while the one that hit the Amazon warehouse was more north, near St. Louis.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

jimt1234 5y ago

Mentions of "tornado sirens" in these comments are triggering bad memories from my childhood in the Midwest. The house I grew up in had a tornado siren on our property, probably about 100 feet from my bedroom window. It was so f--king loud!!! And it felt like it last forever. Ugh!

disabled 5y ago

Amazon is going to get sued hardcore, guaranteed. The issue is that nobody had to die. Even kids’ summer camps in tornado prone zones have this figured out. The summer camp I went to had 2 rooms in the camp’s gym that were formal tornado shelters. The gym, with these tornado shelter rooms, were built in 2001. The entire camp (300+ people) could fit in these rooms. Everyone could technically sleep in there too, but obviously they would split us up into boys/girls rooms and the counselors would still be watching us the whole time. The 2 rooms themselves were basically a 12” enclosure (including the ceilings). There were also concrete pillars in the room to reinforce the structure. During normal times we used them for various activities. But, at least during a couple of summers, we had to evacuate (from the cabins or wherever) there. The program staff (people in charge of the camp) were always monitoring the meteorological radar 24/7. This was in North Texas, which is tornado alley. The camp was an hour north of the Dallas/Ft. Worth metroplex.

MrFoof 5y ago
Amazon warehouses are Tilt-Up Construction. Basically 4-to-6-inch thick cast concrete panels on a grid on metal tubes as joists. Support pillars with basic trusses, and a roof tying it together. You lose a ton of stability once that roof is gone. You lose a truss or a few pillars, and I'd imagine it came down like a house of concrete cards very, very quickly after the first wall section fell. It has no chance against a tornado direct hit. You need a dedicated shelter structure for that.
- ranrotx 5y ago
  You know what else is tilt-up? Most big box stores. Not sure why Amazon is being singled out here as I’m sure this building complied with all local building codes.

todd8 5y ago

Strangely, tornados are largely a phenomenon a of the USA. Canada (the worlds second biggest country), has about 100 tornadoes per year putting it in second place; the US has 1200. See [1]. The most powerful tornados are the terrifying F5 category ones. The US has had 59 of those. Throughout the rest of the world, no other country has had more than two. See [2]. More precisely, most of these F5 tornadoes have happened in just a few states, Iowa, Texas, Oklahoma, and Kansas have had six each, and Alabama has had seven. See [3]. [1] https://the-weather-station.com/countries-with-most-tornadoes/ https://the-weather-station.com/countries-with-most-tornadoe... [2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_F5_and_EF5_tornadoes https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_F5_and_EF5_tornadoes [3] https://www.spc.noaa.gov/faq/tornado/f5torns.html https://www.spc.noaa.gov/faq/tornado/f5torns.html