I live in Nebraska it goes without saying that we don't deal with hurricanes. We get tornados that will turn your house into a pile of kindling with 30 seconds notice but the effect area is quite small.

When I see hurricane damage it looks on the news at least that it's total annihilation. Houses blasted into toothpicks, Boats tossed through burger kings like king kong threw them ect. Is this typical damage or is the media just cherry picking the worst shocking images to up the ratings.

Lots of people are buying plywood for windows why would they if the house had zero chances of survival?

So what is typical damage that a residential property could sustain in a hurricane direct hit?

Anyone care to share pictures? Of what real damage looks like?

I live in Tornado Ally myself and no amount of prepping can you make you house survive unless it is completely made of reinforced concrete. If I lived on a coast where a hurricane would happen I would already have a stock pile of plywood to cover the windows so wouldn't have to get them last minute. It is the shit flying around that destroys the windows yet with time to prep and material then wouldn't be an issue. Yet those tornado's like you said you may get five to ten minutes warning at most. No time to do anything other than get to shelter.

Basically, boarding up windows is to prevent flying debris from entering the home. Remember, hurricanes produce high speed winds that last for hours over hundreds or thousands of miles of land mass.  Lots of stuff gets airborne, tree limbs, boards, and anything else not tied down.   Most homes have a decent change of survival even if they take a little flooding.  Changes in wind speed and pressure are lower and slower than what occurs in tornadoes..  The "wiped from the face of the Earth" kinds of damage usually occurs near the ocean or in low lying areas that take a heavy water storm surge.  Water is the real killer, not the wind.  That kind of damage can be wide spread in places, and "yes" it makes for dramatic news photos.

EDIT FOR TYPING.

The easy answer is that think of Irma as supersized EF5 tornado - but 40-50 miles wide.  Even without the water damage, the 185 (with 220mph measured gusts), that will destroy any building, except solid concrete.  So anything that gets hit by the eyewall is generally destroyed.  Rain drops traveling at that speed transfer energy far more than wind (which will at lower speeds just go around an obstacle).  Surge lifts and pushes things easily if you are at low levels.

Outside the eyewall, hurricane force winds extend maybe 70 additional miles in some directions.  But they drop off quickly from the eye, The first 10-15 miles from the eyewall have 100+ mph.  At that level, it can easily damage/destroy buildings, and create projectiles.  After that, it's 50+ miles of hurricane 75+ mph which almost any building built to recent code in the US will be able to deal with with little damage (other than shingle loss).

Anywhere which gets surge... a 1 cubic yard of water weighs a ton, so think of any 3 foot tall wave as a one ton battering ram.  And waves aren't just 3 feet in size, they roll along in a long line, like a multi-ton steam roller.  That happens everywhere the winds push the waves up - basically anywhere there are tropical storm winds or higher.  The larger the winds, the larger the possible waves.

All the islands that have been shown, those are built shoddily.  Even the big resorts.  And the boats, get thrown about by the big waves and pushed by the winds into buildings and onto roads.

Think of the most violent rainstorm you can imagine (no tornado though, usually), absolute downpour, massive rain coming in sideways, driven by wind 90-100-120 mph hour after hour. Tons of branches and some trees come down, power goes out, gutters and downspouts are torn off and fly through the air, large sections of shingles and sometimes even parts of the roof itself get peeled off. If you don't cover windows, many are shattered by flying debris. You get several inches of rain per hour. Cars and trucks lift up and down and look like they are going to get tossed if the storm is strong enough. Every intersection is out, traffic lights and power lines are down all over the place. Lots of roads are flooded. But as long as your house is concrete block and you are prepared you should be fine. Lots of damage, but not what you see on the news.

As mentioned above, that total, wiped off the map destruction is from the storm surge. Not much survives that in a big storm.

I have not seen a total count but Texas saw a ton of tornadoes during Harvey.

Ok, thanks for the replies guys. So as I kind of expected the wiped off the map damage is really just in the near center (eye wall) and where ever the water touches man made stuff like shores harbors ect. Further from the eye it drops off a lot and is just a nasty storm. It seemed silly for people to be hardening their timber construction homes if they were just going to be blasted to smithereens.

So other than board up the windows what do you guys do to prepare your homes to weather the storm?


Full disclosure I was in the Navy and stationed in Virginia Beach however while I was there we only got hit by one hurricane and we put to sea to avoid it so I missed landfall.

For the storm itself, I'll secure and thing outside that could become airborne, I always check to see if there are any limbs or trees that could fall and trim or cut them down, ill park my truck up next to the house to at least protect it from one side.

Other than that, the prep is more re about the aftermath. Hermine came ashore about 15 miles see if me a year ago, cat 1. Not that big a deal wind-wise, but the fear factor was ratcheted up because it hit about 11 pm. I also live in a crappy old house on 5 acres of oak and sweet gum, including them completely surrounding my house. Any trees that were unhealthy had no problem snapping off (except this one oak 20 feet from my house that should fall the other direction provided the wind cooperates). 4-5 hours of non-stop hard wind can do some damage.

Anyway, my power was out for 4 days. I had a 24" dia oak across my driveway and 20+ pine trees across the one road in and out of my neighborhood...and the whole county was the same. But, I had also separated my right shoulder a little over a month before, so it took a toll to cut up and remove that driveway tree.

Generator, chainsaw, propane burners, food, water, fuel, etc was all prepped and good

We had 7 confirmed in Houston

Very few actually deal with the reality. We just keep building stick framed McMansions and add hurricane anchors to the list of things the contractor forgets to install. Not forgetting that the building site was chosen for it's scenic location on the edge of high water twenty years ago, which was a low ranking event.

Just wait til next week - there will be a new high. You can measure it by the silt line on the second floor.

We install electric burglar alarms but ignore window security film, store plywood we used once which the kids turn into skateboard ramps, but never hang real shutters or install metal roll downs. We demand a high consumption electric lifestyle but attempt to backfeed the house wiring with a generator in the garage.

The list could go on. Regardless of the suffering Americans don't even try. They prefer to blow their money on cosmetic issues rather than make sound choices to protect themselves, then stand at the curb and curse the government for not protecting them from their decisions. But have the local building inspector tell them they aren't up to code and it could be at their house fire getting put out - they still won't listen.

Been around 64 years, I've come to the conclusion we deserve it. We live shallow lives, make selfish decisions, build junk houses and when things start to need a coat of paint sell and move to another fresh new McMansion in our new SUV. All financed on money we have yet to pay back.

People who pay cash, live debt free, own their older home and car are despised and looked down on by the media and elites. I'll stop here because the next post will say "go be poor somewhere else."

And you wonder why the prime method of construction in the better parts of the third world is solid poured concrete. It takes a really big artillery shell to mess that up.

Don 't underestimate the power of a hurricane.  When I was in college in Raleigh, NC, hurricane Fran came through.  Raleigh is a couple of hours drive from the coast, so call it 100 miles inland.  We had trees down, power out for a week over a large area, and a cleanup that lasted years as evidenced from the big burning pile of rubble and trees.  I was doing a part time gig as a truck driver and had been out of town when it first hit.  Coming back into the area, there were no lights.  The typical light pollution of the city was simply not there.  Some low areas flooded.

While houses were not typically destroyed, there was a lot of damage to houses and cars caused by downed trees (mostly roof and windows).  This also made getting anywhere troublesome for a while.  People who owned chainsaws took it upon themselves to clear the roads in their neighborhoods in many cases.  I specifically remember a blue BMW whose owner came to stay with friends in Raleigh be squashed by a huge old oak.  

This experience is one of my motivations to prepare for such things.

Just to add to some of what the others have stated already:
Hurricanes often bring with them tornadoes.  OP, you state that you are already familiar with that.  The pics of absolute devastation is almost completely tornadoes or storm surge.
The wind will typically remove siding, shingles and occasionally pieces of the roof.  If that occurs, it is possible to compromise the entire structure and destroy the building, but that would be more rare.
Another big problem is trees falling.  The rains saturate the ground, then the wind constantly pounding going one direction and if you are unfortunate enough to be close enough to the center you will get winds pounding from the opposite direction also, tends to break trees or uproot them.

The flying debris is a major concern.  It will break windows.  A broken window is now a hole in the side of your home, which compromises it.

Events such as Harvey at landfall vs. Harvey in Houston area are polar opposite - Corpus Christi got the typical wind + storm surge problems.  Houston and the areas surrounding got a stalled tropical system that was feeding from the gulf and just dumped rain continuously flooding everything.