Jim:
I live in southern Louisiana. A guy that lives near me built a dome several months before Hurricane Andrew it is a wood framed [geodesic] dome, covered with shingles.He told me he had a very hard time finding some one who would agree to shingle it. That dome has held up to every hurricane to hit us since Andrew with only minor damage. – Mosby in Louisiana
JWR Replies: I much prefer monolithic domes over the more conventional Buckminster Fuller geodesic style wood frame domes. My brother was the owner/contractror of one of latter and he could never get the thing to seal out the rain properly. Shingling all of those little triangles is a nightmare. Geodesic style wood frame domes have roughly the same lifespan as any other wood frame house. But a monolithic dome will probably last for generations.
All dome homes can take tremendous wind loading. This is because of Bernoulli’s principle [1]. (The wind velocity–and pressure–is roughly the same on the front and the back of any round object.)