Just curious, wouldn't it have been wiser to put the failover servers somewhere in the Midwest? It's pretty much as far away from the ocean as one can get, making tsunamis/hurricanes/etc. irrelevant, low earthquake risk, and a shorter flight from NYC. Seems a little inadvisable to place the infrastructure in two coastal areas; I guess it's probably about the local talent pool.
The Midwest isn't immune to the effects of hurricanes. We've frequently lost power, sometimes up to a week, when bad hurricanes come through. They just become super storms over the Midwest and take down trees which cut power lines. And snow/ice can often take out power for up to a day.
So, I'd think that rather than place something in Ohio and New York, both which can be affected by the same weather pattern within a day or two, different coasts offers better protection.
In raw geographical terms, Ohio only barely counts as "the Midwest"; I think it is included in that region primarily for cultural/economic reasons. What about Kansas City or Omaha?
I lived in KC for some years and we'd occasionally get remnants of gulf hurricanes, but they'd just be severe storm systems that would pass through. We rarely lost power, but if we did, it was never for protracted time periods, and generators in data centers should easily be able to deal with power loss from severe storms.
Tornadoes are pretty much the least threatening natural disaster out there, as their area of effect is usually small and their duration is usually short, so I think "tornado alley" is actually a fine place for a data center meteorlogically.
FYI, according to your link: "The difference between hurricane and typhoon is that tropical cyclones in the west Pacific are called Typhoons and those in the Atlantic and east Pacific Ocean are called Hurricanes." Last I checked, Oregon is in the east Pacific, so the tropical cyclone would (indeed) be called a hurricane, yes?
If a tropical cyclone hit Oregon it would probably have started as a hurricane, not a tornado. Typhoons form west of the International Date Line, and they move predominantly west. Typhoons are pretty much guaranteed to never move east across the IDL, because of the prevailing winds.
I think you got confused about the "NE Pacific Ocean" thing under the Hurricane column. The NE Pacific Ocean is the part of the Pacific Ocean that Oregon is on.
It would technically be an extratropical cyclone, but it would likely have started as a tropical hurricane off the coast of Mexico.
