I’m surprised that nobody has posited that the reason mobile homes appear to be more frequently targetted by tornados is simply that people, recognizing anecdotally that the region they inhabit is subject to somewhat frequent tornados, determine that the financial, and human, havoc caused by having their highrises and skyscrapers destroyed twice a year might be too much to handle.
An alternative is that the only people remaining in tornado alley are those who couldn’t afford to get out, and get real houses. Granted this is somewhat more elitist, and non p.c., but considering that land values are lower in this area, it is another possible explanation.
…except that…tornadoes don’t damage skyscrapers and high-rises. As a matter of fact, I’d be hard put to it to name a single instance of a tornado damaging a skyscraper or high-rise.
Indeed, DDG, but sjbdtz’s post is suggestive. Welcome to the Boards, by the way, sjbdtz.
A WAG: To have had the capital to build high rises and skyscrapers that would withstand tornados you would have had to have enough to live and something left over to invest. Having to rebuild every now and then might have prevented the required saving, stopping communities from becoming big and rich enough to profitably build relatively tornado-proof buildings.
There’s the Bank One Tower that’s still sitting derelict in downtown Fort Worth after being hit by a tornado in 2000. According to this page about it, the damage was such that the owners were unable to afford the necessary repairs and there was talk of simply demolishing the whole thing.
Granted, this is hardly a tornado destroying a skyscraper, but the damage has been enough to effectively end its economic life.
Okay, but one or two instances of tall buildings being damaged by tornadoes hardly adds up to a hidden behavioral trend on the part of homo sapiens to avoid building high-rises in Tornado Alley. I can think of a number of good-sized cities, with high-rises, or at least “very tall office buildings”, smack in harm’s way every spring (Kansas City, Springfields in IL and MO), and AFAIK none of them have a recurrent problem with tornadoes destroying high-rises, not to the extent of having to literally count the cost before building any more high-rises in those cities, not to the extent of the prevalence of tornadoes being some kind of psychological deterrent.
This line of argument seems to be sliding off the edge of logic. The Woolworth Building opened in 1913. Nearly all large US cities now were already large cities then. Even more so for the Seagrams Building (1958).
What does a tornado do to an eight-story masonry structure?
The Fujita Scale does not address “damage to large masonry structures”. I would assume that this is because it doesn’t occur often enough to merit being put on the scale. An F5 tornado only removes frame houses, not masonry structures.