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Parking under overpass in severe weather is 'spectacularly dangerous' (theweathernetwork.com)
39 points by pigtailgirl on May 23, 2022 | hide | past | favorite | 22 comments



The article seems to state that parking in the middle of the road is spectacularly dangerous. Nothing it states seems to suggest that parking on the shoulder under a bridge is dangerous. Based on the title, I was expecting warnings about bridge collapse.


They should have done a better job in the article but the dangers were explicitly mentioned in the first video talking about how the air pressure greatly changes under the bridge accelerating the wind speeds and can suck you out, which happened to a news crew in the 90's sheltering under an overpass.


I was expecting new information i hadn’t considered about an elevated risk of flash flooding under underpasses,or similar, but instead it’s just that unexpected stopped traffic in shit visibility is a recipe for a pile up, which is obviously true.

I will continue to pull well off the shoulder under an underpass to ride out lightning storms on my motorcycle and not fret too much about getting washed away when I do so. Rain isn’t a problem, generally, but the conspicuous lack of a faraday cage around me on a bike means a roof can be a good friend in an electrical storm.


Another thing you shouldn't do in a severe storm, especially tornado weather, is get out of your vehicle.

There has long been this idiotic wive's tale about how you should get out of your car and take cover in a ditch or culvert or something.

That's the worst thing you can do. If the winds are powerful enough to pick up your car, imagine how easily they could throw a piece of sheet metal through your abdomen. Or pick you up like a rag doll. You would be much better off riding it out buckled into that steel cage.

Having grown up in tornado country, I have always thought this. But i finally saw some research confirming this from the university of Oklahoma.


You might not have a choice!

If enough people in front of you have stopped under the overpass, so will you. Sometimes visibility is so reduced that being in an underpass is a relief.

I once emerged from an underpass after a particularly severe storm (possibly tornado) only to find an 18-wheeler stopped, facing me, a short distance from the over pass. He had obviously been blown across the grass median from the opposite traffic lane. The rain was so intense that I didn't perceive the truck until I was only a few car-lengths away.


My California-based family stopped briefly under a bridge during a Nebraska thunderstorm, due to the hail. We had more experience with snow, but this was summer. Hail happens in California but not necessarily as big as this was.


It should come as no surprise that having neither situational awareness or common sense is often hazardous to one's health, wallet or both.

You can find innumerable examples of this concept at work but any behavioral rule of thumb you attempt to write using any handful of examples will have so many exceptions it will be about as useful as a coin toss to anybody so lacking in situational awareness and common sense that they needed the rule of thumb to help them in the first place.

Nobody has infinite cognitive ability and the less you have the more valuable any one bit is so the temptation to replace thinking with rules of thumb is understandable and has merit but trying to replacing thinking with crap rules "do/don't park here/there during inclement weather" is well beyond the point where diminishing returns become a fool's errand. There is simply no replacement for situational awareness and common sense.


> It should come as no surprise that having neither situational awareness or common sense is often hazardous to one's health, wallet or both.

Common sense says that getting under shelter during a storm is a good idea. If your common sense is more scientific and evolved, that's great for you, but I'm one of the people who needed to be told that an underpass can be a dangerous place to hide, so maybe just be glad that you're smarter than the average bear and don't waste too much effort looking down at the rest of us?


What a woeful website. Giant banner for cookies, overlay autoplay DRM video taking up half the screen multiple times. I gave up.


And while this refers to parking under an elevated bridge / overpass, parking in an underpass, or even a slightly-under-ground-level pass is probably an even worse idea. They tend to flood.


TLDR: safe from the storm, at high risk of other drivers ramming into you because you’re an idiot and stopped in the middle of the road.


Actually in the first video the guy says "don't seek shelter under an overpass because the wind can get compressed through the smaller space and accelerate the velocity of the air, pulling you out of the area."

I'd hate to be the demonstration the Venturi effect in a tornado.

And of course, also I imagine you can get hit by another car also on the highway in a chaotic situation with poor visibility and lots of other distractions.


It’s a little amazing they didn’t bother to summarize in the text and assumed everyone would watch the video. That’s actually a very interesting piece of information and deserved more real estate in the article than stopping creates a road hazard - duh.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T2Qu7cgwJmw

I wouldn't want to be in the open either.


I don't know if there really is a safe place except underground in a storm shelter.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lKDSt6SAeuM


Above-ground bermed reinforced concrete structures would be a pretty good bet — less issues with flooding than a bunker, but it's still resistant to wind and things the wind carries with it.

Wal-Mart's data center in Missouri, bermed and built directly on bedrock:

https://cryptome.org/eyeball/walmart/walmart-birds.htm


Modern buildings have a second building in them, the stairwells, which are probably about as good as it gets if you're unable to get underground.

High wind speeds are astonishingly destructive. I guess I'd rather be in my car than on foot when wandering around tornado class weather, but at that point I've already lost the bet and should have stayed home.


Is that real? Get sucked out? (Blown out I think everbody means) It sounds so much like an urban legend.


You may be safer from hail and flying debris. Be careful of what's behind you.

In heavy weather everybody is slowing down and may come to a complete stop.

On a expressway, turning around to avoid a severe storm is not an option.


These would be the folks who immediately turn on their hazard lights when it starts to rain.


Or that have a medium-sized package in their trunk, which then won't close. Hazard lights and 20mph under the speed limit!


In Florida it's actually illegal to move while your hazards are on but that stops nobody.




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