Blown Away: A Meteorologists Guide to Damage from Windstorms and Wildfires

The engineering community has firmly established what it takes to build wind resistant buildings. In fact, there is guidance to build resistance against all prominent hazards, including a tornado resistant building design, within the flagship American Society for Civil Engineers building loads standard (ASCE7). The challenge we now face is that adopting this standard into building codes on the state and municipal level is difficult; roughly 40% of the U.S. has no modern building code, including many high risk areas from hurricanes and tornadoes. There are many reasons why communities don’t adopt new codes. These can range from lack of knowledge about their benefits to financial reasons. However, there are several organizations devoted to outreach to incentivize resilient buildings and modern codes, including the Insurance Institute for Business and Home Safety (IBHS), the Federal Alliance for Safe Homes (FLASH), and Smart Home America.

The AMS Committee on Engineering Resilient Communities would like to use the information provided by one or more of these institutions with the goal to help inform the meteorological community about the impacts of severe winds on buildings, methods to improve building resilience and ideas on how our community can inform society about building resilience. We intend to accomplish our goals, in part, through conducting this course. Our intended outcome is to leverage the huge outreach potential that the meteorological community provides to inform our partners on the elements of building resilience by providing information and tools that can be easily used. This four hour course will begin that process by providing information, and materials to assist our participants to provide effective outreach to their constituents.

	Early Rate	Late Rate
	Through 7 May	8 May - 22 June
AMS Member	$20	$25
Non-Member	$20	$25
Student Member	$20	$25

Course Description:

Participants will take with them the following concepts, applications, and understandings:

the attributes of wind most useful in determining building loads and eventual performance,
how wind interacts with buildings, bluff body aerodynamics,
how buildings fail with regards to structural elements, and how building function can be adversely impacted by the loss of nonstructural elements,
how building damage can be mitigated by a variety of steps that can be more affordable than realized,
and what the myths are and how to dispel them.

Participants will be able to convey to others that there are actions that can be taken to improve the resilience of their homes and businesses no matter their economic means. Finally, the students will leave with resources to assist in their activities in research, outreach, or general knowledge.

VIEW AGENDA

If you have questions regarding the course, please contact James LaDue.

Instructors:

Tanja Fransen

NOAA/NWS

Tanja Fransen has been with NOAA/ National Weather Service for 30 years, starting while a college student at the University of Northern Colorado. For the last 3 years she's been the Meteorologist-in-Charge (MIC) at the NWS Forecast Office in Portland, OR where she leads a team of up to 27 talented scientists and technicians who are striving to build a weather and climate ready nation. Her past NWS locations include Glasgow, MT; Rapid City, SD; Bismarck, ND and Cheyenne, WY. While in High School and College, Tanja served on a volunteer fire department in Colorado, and her passion for fire weather meteorology started there.

While in Montana, she was the Warning Coordination Meteorologist for 14 years, and conducted many damage assessments, from severe weather, to flooding, and even fires. She spent two decades training wildland firefighters on fire weather, and NWS decision support to the wildfire community.

Rachael Gauthier

Insurance Institute for Business and Home Safety

Rachael Penton Gauthier joined IBHS in April 2024 as a meteorologist and science content producer. Gauthier previously worked as a broadcast meteorologist and reporter for more than a decade, working in local news at stations in Louisiana, Alaska, and Ohio. Most recently, she served as the Chief Meteorologist for KALB in Alexandria, LA.

Gauthier earned a B.S. in meteorology from the University of South Alabama and a M.S. in geoscience from Mississippi State University. She is a member of the American Meteorological Society and an FAA certified drone pilot.

Dr. Christine Standohar-Alfano

ICC Forensics

Dr. Alfano has been performing forensic evaluations for over ten years starting with her doctoral research when she analyzed damage and researched mitigation techniques for wood-frame construction subjected to tornado loading. Upon graduation, she researched full-scale building performance under wind loads and wildfire/ember exposure in a large-scale wind tunnel. She transitioned to forensics and has inspected and assessed damage to thousands of properties including residential and commercial structures. Dr. Alfano is involved in research and code committees and is an associate member and secretary of the SEI/ASCE/AMS Wind Speed Estimation Standards Committee. This standard is in development as a joint collaboration between engineering and meteorology communities and will provide a consensus document on the estimation of wind speeds in tornadoes and other windstorms by direct measurements (in situ and radar) or by indirect techniques (the Enhanced Fujita Scale, tree fall, etc.).
Dr. Alfano joined ICC Forensics in 2024 and is based in Minneapolis, Minnesota.