An Interesting Article About Tornado Wind Research

Remember the old warnings to open windows and move to the southwest corner of your home during a tornado? It was Tech's wind engineering researchers who proved that advice wrong and convinced the National Weather Service to stop issuing it, he said.

''We learned that the buildings were damaged by high winds, not by the change in pressure,'' Mehta said.

The wind makes structures look as though they've exploded, he said. ''We pointed out that opening windows could actually be dangerous. We also found out that it was debris, not pressure, that broke windows.''

Tech researchers also convinced people that regardless of the direction from which a storm is traveling, no particular corner of a structure is safer than another because winds are circular, Mehta said.

It was also Tech, he said, that initially determined that closets, bathrooms and other small interior rooms fare best in tornadoes.

''All of this seems like common sense now, but then people believed in those things (like opening windows),'' he said.

At Texas Tech University.