Natural disasters such as hailstorms, ice storms, extreme heatwaves, tornados, hurricanes, and blizzards often cause severe wreckage. It’s encouraging to see more people seeking out suitable home storm shelters. Having a proper home storm shelter can save lives, especially given the level of current weather storms in the United States.
It’s always prudent to keep tabs on current weather storms, have a family plan on what to do during extreme weather, and keep your home storm shelter stocked with emergency supplies. An area weather report is generally available via a news app or weather app and can tell you whether you’re experiencing bad weather right now.
When looking through your different home storm shelter options, it’s essential to know you can choose:
above ground or below ground positioning, types of material used in construction, location of the storm shelter, electrical availability and capability, how large or small to make the shelter. Each of these aspects has its own set of options.
To begin narrowing down your choices, start by listing out the most common natural disasters in your area. If flooding is a problem, then stay away from underground shelters. If tornados are a problem in your areas, consider an underground location, and so on.
The weather can be a beautiful and eye opening thing. However, some weather conditions can be very dangerous and anxiety provoking. Natural disasters such as tornados, hurricanes, and blizzards often cause such extreme wreckage and disaster that cities are left leveled and people harmed, or worse. Proper preparation is crucial in minimizing the damages of these natural disasters. This means having a safe place, or storm shelters to protect yourself and your family from high winds and dangerous cyclones. Because the storm shelter serves the purpose of protecting you and your family, a lot of thought and planning should go into purchasing the best one.
Above ground versus below ground Storm shelters were once only installed below ground. This is because a tornado is a rotating, funnel shaped cloud that extends from a thunderstorm to the ground with whirling winds that can reach 300 mph. Tornados touch down on ground, and wipe out most buildings along its path. That is, unless you have an extremely secure building that is able to withstand the 300 mph winds. Above ground tornado shelters are becoming more popular as people are finding they would not like to be trapped undergrounds during increment weather conditions.
Material The material of your storm shelter is extremely important. Storm shelters that are not made from the best, highest quality of ingredients are likely to be very unsafe. Tornados not only product high speed winds, but may also bring in dangerous lightning or large sized hail storms. The materials of your storm shelters need to be able to withstand all of these weather conditions. Some tornados may even produce flooding conditions. A safe and effective tornado shelter will also withstand large amounts of flooding.
Location of storm shelter Tornados generally move from southwest to northeast, but have also been recorded traveling in any direction. The forward speed of a tornado varies from 30 mph to 70 mph. Finding the right location for your storm shelter may be crucial in optimal safety. A professional storm shelter company will look at local tornado trends and find the best placement of a shelter on your property. The goal is to keep it away from interlocking winds and attempting to find a location that receives the lesser amount of wind conditions. The damage paths of tornados can be in excess of one mile wide and 50 miles long. However, there will be parts of the tornado?s path that are more dangerous than others.
Electrical ability Although having access to electricity is not as important as the material and location of your shelter, it is a useful addition. You may be forced to remain in your tornado safe room for many hours and having electrical access can be very useful. It can also provide you with the ability to track the storm. This ensures that you do not leave the storm shelter, prior to the tornado passing completely. Most storm shelters are equipped with some type of electricity, but it may be lost due to high winds. It can be helpful to have a generator or a radio and lighting that runs on batteries.
Space Again, it is likely that you will be in your storm shelter for many hours. If you live in a tornado prone area, you may spend a lot of time in your storm shelters. If you have a large family, you may want to build a storm shelter that is comfortable for everyone. If you are going to allow neighbors into the storm shelter, you may require additional room. It may also be useful to have plenty of storage space to store food, drinks, and sleeping materials. Entertainment devices may also be beneficial for young children.
Tornados are an unpreventable part of our weather. Although tornados cannot be entirely predicted, they can be monitored. Some weather conditions are more prone to tornado conditions. These areas could benefit from storm shelters. A great amount of planning and preparation should go into building the right storm shelter for optimal safety and comfort.