Accuweaather's coverage of Tornado that hit Arabi

The second picture (the ones with the two buses)

Those busses are sitting in a strip parking lot in front of an elementary school. The grass you can see in the lower right corner is the school play area. The school kinda wraps around three sides of that grassy area (which is a decent size).

Those school busses spend nights backed in against the fence between the lot and the field. So the winds picked up and moved the busses like that.

The school has only very minor cosmetic damage. They were closed yesterday and today due to a lack of power. They have power as of a couple of hours ago, and will be open tomorrow.

Tornadoes are crazy things.

I had to go assess the damage on all the outside HVAC units, which made it pretty unscathed. A mini split condenser was ripped off and thrown, the rest was just a few panels

You know, that douchebag that got banned got me to thinking. Not only was he a douche, he was also wrong.

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No one seems to give a crap when a hurricane hits FL and trashes 1000's of nice houses. LA needs to toughen up and stop being pussies, this and Ida are nothing compared to what we get here in Florida on a yearly basis.

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I was pretty sure that LA had more landfalls here recently and I was right. The last 3 years:

LA landfalls
Barry, Cat 1
Laura, Cat 4
Delta, TS
Zeta, TS
Christobal, TS
Claudette, TS
Ida, Cat 4

Flerduh landfalls
Nestor, TS
Sally, Cat 2 (technically made landfall in Gulf Shores, AL)
Eta, TS
Elsa, TS
Fred, TS
Mindy, TS

So Louisiana has had 2 majors, a Cat 1, and 4 tropical storms (plus the tornadoes now), while florida has had 5 tropical storms and a Cat 2 that technically didnt make landfall in Florida

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though Sally absolutely impacted the panhandle enough to count.

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yea thats why I threw him a bone

I know just noting how odd it is that Florida, a huge target, somehow has seen fewer storms than Louisiana over the period.

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What the hell do residents do when a tornado is bearing down like that?

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Get in your bathtub and cover yourself with blankets.

What to do?

A year or two ago, there was a tornado that went through a very poor area in north central Alabama. Folks' trailers were totaled. But somebody had the forethought to build a shelter out of an abandoned schoolbus (no wheels) that he buried under several feet of soil he moved into/onto his property. He and his family and (IIRC) some neighbors all headed for that low tech storm shelter and all survived.

No HOA.

DP

From Kajunangelle's link above

the first one I've seen with the CBD off in the distance