Tornadoes occur, during hurricanes, along with wind, rain, and storm surges.
I would opine, that it largely depends on the geographic location of the act of nature.
Regular tornadoes, and earthquakes, come with little or no warning, but typically are very brief events. Both capable of inflicting damage.
Hurricanes, are more “predictable,” but it can last for many hours. You typically start getting doses of the hurricanes power, as it nears, like heavy rain, and wind, for maybe days before the main event, and of course, the effects continue even after the storm is passed. A 400 mile wide storm, moving at 5 mph, can devastate a large area, for almost 2 full days. When they stall, you will experience varying degrees of weather, for multiple days. Plus, it’s not unheard of, for another hurricane, to be only a few days away from hitting the same place again.
As far as hurricanes making landfall, it’s all about the position of the eye wall, in regards to the damage inflicted. The worst part is the northeastern part of the storm, closest to the eye. That’s where the storm surge is the worst.
Surge levels can be deceptive too, to an inexperienced storm rider. Example. A 13 ft storm surge, can give people in two story buildings, a false sense of security. The surge’s depth, is is ft, but the water is not still. It is like an ocean, in a storm. Meaning there are swells, and large waves that are not accounted for in the depth. 3–10 ft waves, on top of the surge, can induce catastrophic damage. Plus, there is a large amount of debris being pushed around, at the same time. Ain addition to smaller debris, there are vehicles, and houses floating around too.Most coastal areas have nearby marinas too, so there are boats, of varying size floating around as well.
Worse case scenario, is getting hit by the northeast part of the eye first. Keep in mind that the wind will be moving in one direction on that side of the storm. Then the eye passes. After that the wind blows the opposite direction for the remainder of the worst of it. That’s what happened here in Charleston SC, when Hugo hit. I stayed here, during that storm, much to my regret. I did get to walk outside as the eye passed over us. It was wild, as there was almost no wind at all. Then, after about 40 minutes, we got the south side of the storm. I think it came ashore, right around dusk, and it was amazingly intense, until the sun came up. It was pitch black outside, but trees, and other things slammed into the house constantly. You could hear large trees splintering, and feel the house jar, from each large impact. We started out in a closet, in my parent’s room. But the impacts chased us around the house throughout the night. We ended up in the hallway, mosteoporosis of the time. The house shook violently the whole time. It was like a freight train was doing laps around our house, even when we weren’t receiving large impacts. The main surge, was about 10 miles northeast of us. People in schools (shelters) were putting their kids up into ceiling tiles of cafeterias, and gyms, as the water was so deep. Most adults simply held onto floating debris, or swam.
After the storm, as day broke, the entire area was unrecognizable. It looked similar to pictures I’ve seen after a large bombing raid. Trees, houses, boats, and other large things littered the streets. There were yachts, and sailboats in neighborhoods everywhere. All roads were impassable. The National Guard were heroes. They were on the scene, as soon as the storm passed. We had no power, for over a month, and there was nowhere to get supplies, because there really weren’t any structures, that weren’t heavily damaged by the storm. Walmart opened after, a couple weeks. But there was no power, so we waited in line for hours, as they let us in, in small groups with flashlights. There were army trucks everywhere, handing out dry ice, and water.
One of the many trees that had fallen on our house, was so bih, it took two big military trucks, and a small army, to get it off the house. Before the storm, it was so big, that 5 people couldn’t lock arms around it. We hypothesized that it was that tree, that held the roof on during the storm. The pine trees snapped in half, and became like scud missiles. The oaks were uprooted.
It was the single most powerful thing, I’ve ever personally been through. Mother nature, definitely earned my respect. It took over two decades, to fully recover the area. When you drive north on hwy 17, you can STILL see the effects of the storm surge. The Francis Marion forrest, was almost completely detroyed. Maybe 1, out of each hundred trees, was still standing. The forrest has since recovered. But you can still see large swaths of open land, that has just now began to grow small trees.
Charleston, at the time, was mostly suburban neighborhoods. Now, 30 years later, there are a lot of large buildings. Those should stand up to hurricanes better.
I think an earthquake here, would do less damage, than a huge city. Of course, we all are familiar with tsunamis now, that could accompany them. As flat as this area is, a tsunami would reach FAR inland, and likely be cataclysmic.
We get regular tornadoes here too, but they’re very rare.
We had a small one once, in a neighborhood, I used to love in, but it was very brief, and like I said small.
Each natural disaster, has it’s own means of destruction. The type of city, and geography, play a big role in which would be the “worst.”
We’ll see what’s left of the Bahamas in the next few days. Dorian was a cat 5. I suspect that the damage is going to be amazing.
Looks like it has a good chance of hitting SC. Hopefully it just skims us, and doesn’t make landfall. We go pretty much go through this every hurricane season. Charleston, is kind of in a nook, so the storms have to hit us directly to inflict maximum damage. Usually, they lose strength a bit, by hitting the land around us first, but I’d be lying if I said that it doesn’t look good currently (12:50AM, EST.) God help wherever it makes landfall…
