East Tenessee storms

Howell

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The storms yesterday produced a lot of damage including cutting external power to at least 1 nuclear plant.

http://m.wrcbtv.com/LocalNewsStory.html?pid=2264&parenturl=http://www.wrcbtv.com/global/Category.asp?c=165559&clienttype=rss_img&itemurl=http://www.wrcbtv.com/Global/story.asp?S=14529435&clienttype=rssstory
 

time

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State of emergency has been declared in seven states. US National Weather Service has preliminary reports of nearly 300 tornadoes since the storm began on Friday, more than 150 on Wednesday alone. Death toll already past 200. :(
 

Mercutio

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My parents saw golf-ball size hail and seven straight hours of thunderstorms that dropped around four inches of rain, but they live on top of what Tennessee calls a mountain and really no ill effects from the storms except a freaked-out dog.

I'm told that the display was quite impressive though.
 

Howell

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95,000 meters without power around my city (not AL). Some/many of the homes in my area (6 mile radius) date back to 1870ish. Mine is only a couple decades newer and we do love our trees. The one that fell on my house has a trunk of about 4ft and stood maybe 60-75 ft tall. My house has a new green hat.

A couple of areas were hit by tornadoes and that's where most of the deaths are but for the most part the property damage came from a combination of high winds and saturated soil resulting in trees toppling over wholesale. This is after several weeks of raining 3/7 days to soften the soil up.

Many of the trees also leaned into and through power lines and started chain reactions taking down multiple power poles. That complicates clean up because understandably nobody wants to get in there with a chain saw without some thumbs up from the power company that the lines are dead. All in all in my area not that many houses were hit that I could see but almost all of the roads were blocked by trees, poles and electrical lines.

There were four lines of rain and severe winds that passed through my area beginning around 830AM through 930PM. Power and internet went out for me around 9AM yesterday and I evacuated between the second and third line to stay with friends.

Of course anyone who lost power and could get mobile eventually wanted to eat. So every intersection had to be negotiated because the power outages took out the lights. Two lanes of cars seven deep in each of 4 directions working together. Forget trying to turn.

I saw some photos from further north and east of tangerine sized hail. The biggest I saw was marble sized.
 

Handruin

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There are some intense photos here.


This one is emotion-capturing.

9528099-essay.jpg
 

LunarMist

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Wow, that is a horror. The estimate is that there are hundreds of dead bodies. Insurance claims must be massive. How many hurricanes were there?
 

Howell

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They were saying on the radio that although they have more tornados in tornado alley when they occur in the southeast they tend to be stronger winds and stay on the ground longer. I bet we are also bet that hey have more resistant construction standards too. I heard the death count was up over 300 passing the worst recorded in '74.

Amazingly 3G has been up the whole time but I have to charge it in the car.
 

mubs

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One consequence of global warming is supposed to be more frequent thunderstorms. I hope we're not headed for more and more freaky weather all over the world.
 

ddrueding

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Re. the one photo Handy mentions, there is a second photo of the man hugging his pet - a beautiful cat that seems glad to cling to him.

Indeed. The text with the pic Handy included:

Andy Page cries as he sits with his cat, Ellie, placed in a pet carrier, in his demolished apartment in Trenton, Ga. Thursday, April 28, 2011, after overnight storms hit the North Georgia and Chattanooga, Tenn. area. Page has several cats and Ellie was the last one he was looking for.
 

Howell

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So I'm reading through my insurance documents when I discover that I am excluded coverage for nuclear hazard including radioactive contamination. Were it not for Japan last monto I'd probably not have noticed it.
 

LunarMist

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So if there is a nuclear blast you are not covered for the fallout damage? I'm not surprised.
 

time

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I'd guess that this means those folk in Japan who aren't allowed back to their houses (ever?) were also not covered. So does this teach us that living within 30km of a reactor is not a very smart move? A bit tough when you think how many people are carrying that risk.
 

LunarMist

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I think it would be cool to live near a nuclear plant, especially if they were hiring.
 

LunarMist

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Hey Mr. 3000 :beer:
How are you doing now personally? Almost back to normal?
 

Howell

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Thanks, Lunar.

I'm staying with friends and waiting for a meeting at the end of the week that will decide everything.
 

Pradeep

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I'd guess that this means those folk in Japan who aren't allowed back to their houses (ever?) were also not covered. So does this teach us that living within 30km of a reactor is not a very smart move? A bit tough when you think how many people are carrying that risk.

That would be very tricky in the US at least:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/42555888/ns/us_news-life/

"If the circles on the map are widened to a 50-mile radius (the same evacuation area that U.S. nuclear officials recommended for Americans living near Japan's troubled Fukushima Dai-ichi reactors), they would cover one in three people in the U.S.

That's 116 million nuclear neighbors, up from 109 million a decade earlier, according to the analysis conducted for msnbc.com by Longcreative, a data analysis and design company.

...

Within 5 miles of the nation's nuclear plants, there are an estimated 916,330 U.s. residents, up 15.0 percent from a decade earlier.
Within 10 miles, the population jumps to 4,079,007, up 16.9 percent.
Within 20 miles, there are 18,510,584 people, up 12.3 percent.
And within 50 miles, 116,223,077 people, up 6.5 percent.
"

Any kind of major accident would likely be covered by the government (via taxes), with the utility potentially taken over after going titsup.
 

LunarMist

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USA is quite large. Whatever massive event would destroy every nuclear plant in the country (spaceborne object?) might be a little bit more devastating itself than just a nuclear leak.
 

Mercutio

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Sudden shift of magnetic poles, mondo-EMP, gamma-ray burst from undetected celestial object, Yellowstone's epochal mega-eruption, Tunguska-like event, zombie apocalypse...

We'd have bigger problems, yes.
 
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