House Built for Hurricanes |
 Dave Thurlow, Host |
From the outside, it looks like a typical, modern frame house on the Outer Banks--two stories, light gray, with a picture window and a deck. It's only a few blocks from the beach. In short, it's the kind of house you'd love to have as a summer hideaway.
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| Kern Pitts Center |
The Kern Pitts Center was built by the town of Southern Shores, North Carolina, with help from the nonprofit Blue Sky Foundation. When the home went up two years ago, a team from Johns Hopkins University was on hand to help wire the house with sensors. The goal is to measure in fine detail what happens when a hurricane's winds try to tear a house apart. The measurements are sent via phone lines, so the research team can watch from the comfort of their lab in Maryland, while the Kern Pitts house is battered by wind and rain.
Last year the house got its first test from Hurricane Bonnie. That storm weakened as it struck the Outer Banks, but the house still measured winds above 60 miles per hour. What's more, it saw much stronger vertical winds than expected - blowing upward at up to 25 miles an hour for brief gusts. The amount of pressure tugging outward on the roof also surprised the research team. A house in a storm is like a delicate chain. Even if most of the structure is solid, it takes only one weak link to jeopardize the whole building's integrity. Should a major hurricane strike in Southern Shores, we could learn a great deal about how storms like Andrew and Mitch take down a house. Call it constructive damage.
Today's contributing writer is Bob Henson and a look at the Kern Pitts Center, please visit our website at mountwashington.org. The Weather Notebook is underwritten by Subaru with major support provided by the National Science Foundation.
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