Welcome New ST Staff: Peter Potvin & Justin Allen

[Steve Miller]

ST has experienced considerable growth and we are expanding staff accordingly. Please help me welcome @Peter Potvin and @Justin Allen to the team!

Peter is a northerner (yes, Canada) and has been a pivotal part of the ST Discord moderation team for the past year. His role here on the forum is creating continuity between the Forum and Discord platforms and also managing membership activities and policy for ST Discord. Peter is a Spring season type of guy and will work alongside other staff to ensure Target Area threads are available and on-track.

Justin is located in Louisiana and brings to the table an enormous tropical chasing background. He will be a big part of bringing the tropical discussion here at Stormtrack up to the levels found on tropical boards elsewhere on the interwebs. Justin also runs Helicity, a quickly evolving brand that encompasses everything from weather swag to live weather broadcasts. So, when you see a tropical thread on ST, please jump on in!

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A complete list of ST volunteer staff can be found here. A huge THANK YOU goes to this list of folks willing to give their time to the ST cause.

 

[Jacob Melton]

Big welcome to the both of you!

 

[Marc R. O'Leary]

Welcome!!

 

[Peter Potvin]

Thank you very much! It's a pleasure to be part of the Forum administration team as well as the Discord moderation team. Severe weather is my passion, so volunteering with Stormtrack.org on both the Forum and Discord platforms means a lot to me. I'm still learning the ins and outs of severe weather and chasing, but it's a fun experience to learn about them.

I don't get many storms in my area (Eastern Ontario, Canada), but when I do there's more microbursts here than supercells that drop tornadoes. If you didn't already know, my area got hit by the storm that produced the 5 tornadoes in the Ottawa/Gatineau area (about 150km to my East) on 09/21/2018. We didn't get hit by a tornado with those storms, but Calabogie, ON (about 65km to my Southeast) got hit by an EF1 tornado that produced winds of up to 175km/h. There wasn't much damage in my area, but the areas I mentioned had heavy damage. Most insurance companies in my area do not provide house insurance for "acts of god", but those that do charge a hefty fee for it. Most people that own houses in this area do not think that they need it because there's a very low chance that they would need it, but in the end it's a good thing to have as an "act of god" (i.e. Tornado) can happen anywhere at any time.

Again, thank you to @Steve Miller and @Mark Blue for allowing me to be part of the team on both platforms. It's great to be part of the Stormtrack.org community!

 

[Marc R. O'Leary]

So what does insurance cover if not "act of god" events?

I thought that was the whole reason for insurance.

 

[Peter Potvin]

@Marc R. O'Leary It all depends on the house itself and the property that it sits on. Mine covers fires, break and enter, vehicle accidents (if a vehicle crashes into the home) and sewage backups. It also covers the replacement cost of property contained inside the home.

They change up their packages very often around here, so when you renew at the end of the year your policy may not cover some things anymore, or may include coverage that you never had before. If it doesn't cover some things anymore that you used to have in the previous year, then you either pay more for it or leave it as is and hope that nothing happens. If it covers more than you used to have, you can either keep it that way or downgrade to save money. Their prices also vary depending on the assessed value of the property, what the risk level is and of course what you want covered.