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Enhanced Fujita Ratings Debate Thread

joshoctober16 said:
oddly enough the next EF scale is going to have distance vehicles thrown , however its one of the only 3 negative parts of the next EF scale.
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Wait, is there a paper on this? I had no idea they were remaking it (the Texas Tech "revamp" from 2022 doesn't count).
 
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OH-IOan said:
Oh, 100%, I'd even say EF4+. Check out this damage in Robinson, IL:
View attachment 41230
That house looks wiped clean (assuming it wasn't cleaned prior, although the footage was taken on April 1 so I doubt it), yet this tornado is never talked about in the Wx community.
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This was apart of the March 31, 2023 tornado outbreak. There are quite a lot of tornadoes forgotten from this outbreak. Most of the attention went to Keota, IA and Little Rock, AR.
 
AJS said:
This was apart of the March 31, 2023 tornado outbreak. There are quite a lot of tornadoes forgotten from this outbreak. Most of the attention went to Keota, IA and Little Rock, AR.
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The Bethel Springs-Hookers Bend EF3 from that day (and the day as a whole) is one of the reasons I'm into weather. Was in a relatively small town called "Pleasent View" (between Nashville and Clarksville) that night, didn't get any sleep. We sheltered in an SUV with a Midland from midnight to three in the morning, what a horrible night to visit family in Tennessee. Anyways, back on-topic, Definitely think at least three EF4s happened that night (Keota, Robinson, Adamsville).
 
OH-IOan said:
The Bethel Springs-Hookers Bend EF3 from that day is one of the reasons I'm into weather. Was in a relatively small town called "Pleasent View" (between Nashville and Clarksville) that night, didn't get any sleep. We sheltered in an SUV with a Midland from midnight to three in the morning, what a horrible night to visit family in Tennessee. Anyways, back on-topic, Definitely think at least three EF4s happened that night (Keota, Robinson, Adamsville).
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I think Wynne, Keota, Covington, Robinson/Sullivan, and the McNairy County EF3 were all capable of producing EF4 damage.
 
AJS said:
I think Wynne, Keota, Covington, Robinson/Sullivan, and the McNairy County EF3 were all capable of producing EF4 damage.
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The McNairy one 100% (that's the Hookers Bend one I was refering to). Deadliest of the outbreak (9 dead) although I can't find many non-stock damage photos. 'Twas a "super-forgotten" tornado. On that, would a "forgotten tornadoes" thread be beneficial in any way? I'm a bit surprised there isn't one.
 
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OH-IOan said:
Ooh, this isn’t a bad idea! Here’s a few contextual ideas that directly relate to intensity but that the NWS doesn’t usually use:
1. Distance vehicles thrown
2. Depth/length of ground scouring
3. Debris granulation
4. Damage to tornado shelters (i.e. Vilonia)
5. Length and presence of cycloidal marking
6. Wind rowing
And more, I’m just spitballing.
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Great idea! I think we should have some examples to compare some of the higher end tornadoes to, just to give us an idea on how strong it is.

Some "textbook" examples of a TF4 would be stuff like Barnsdall, Elkhorn, and the 2021 Tri-State tornado. I also think that the 2023 Amory/Wren tornado would fall under mid-high end TF4.

Some textbook examples of a TF5 would be anything like Tuscaloosa-Birmingham, Rochelle-Fairdale, and Joplin. I do think that Mayfield and Diaz would fall under this catagory, with Diaz being on the lower end and Mayfield being mid-high end TF5.
 
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Ozonelayer said:
Great idea! I think we should have some examples to compare some of the higher end tornadoes to, just to give us an idea on how strong it is.

Some "textbook" examples of a TF4 would be stuff like Barnsdall, Elkhorn, and the 2021 Tri-State tornado. I also think that the 2023 Amory/Wren tornado would fall under mid-high end TF4.

Some textbook examples of a TF5 would be anything like Tuscaloosa-Birmingham, Rochelle-Fairdale, and Joplin. I do think that Mayfield and Diaz would fall under this catagory, with Diaz being on the lower end and Mayfield being mid-high end TF5.
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For the heck of it, some of the highest end TF5s that I would consider worthy of said rating would be Smithville, El-Reno Piedmont, Niles-Wheatland, Hackleburg, Rainsville, Vilonia, Mayfield (As already mentioned), and Parkersburg.
 
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Ozonelayer said:
Great idea! I think we should have some examples to compare some of the higher end tornadoes to, just to give us an idea on how strong it is.

Some "textbook" examples of a TF4 would be stuff like Barnsdall, Elkhorn, and the 2021 Tri-State tornado. I also think that the 2023 Amory/Wren tornado would fall under mid-high end TF4.

Some textbook examples of a TF5 would be anything like Tuscaloosa-Birmingham, Rochelle-Fairdale, and Joplin. I do think that Mayfield and Diaz would fall under this catagory, with Diaz being on the lower end and Mayfield being mid-high end TF5.
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(SKIP THIS IF YOU DON'T WANT TO READ COGNITIVE LINGUISTICS STUFF)
This is somewhat related, but in cognitive linguistics there are two theories that are somewhat similar, prototype theory and exemplar theory. They both pertain to how we mentally organize categories (I'll use BIRD as an example - I promise this relates to your comment, bear with me). Prototype theory would have a prototype containing abstracted features relevant for BIRD, and any members would have some combination of these - wings, feathers, beak, etc. Some birds are more close to the prototype than others (a robin is much closer to BIRD prototype than a penguin or ostrich). Exemplar theory would instead store specific instances of birds in their mind (robin, penguin, etc.). If a new thing is close enough to these exemplars, it's categorized as BIRD. There are also theories that combine these two in some form.

(SKIP TO HERE IF YOU WANT)
Tornadoes. I have wondered if applying these concepts to tornado ratings could be of some use. Here's what I was thinking (broad steps):
- For each EF rating, determine how diagnostic each damage feature is (not based just on frequency, but on how distinct it is for that EF rating). The better a feature can distinguish EF ratings, the higher the weight it is assigned (e.g. maybe extreme ground scouring is rare, but it is highly EF5 specific, so it is given a very high weight)
- For each EF rating, check how well each tornado matches those feature weights calculated previously, and choose the most internally consistent ones (say the top x% of that category). These are the core exemplars for that rating.
- Average the feature profiles of those exemplars to make a prototype for each rating (which serves as the idealized "what an EFX looks like")
- Calculate similarity for each tornado to all prototypes. If its rating doesn't match the prototype it's closest to, and another rating is significantly closer, flag it as a potential misclassification (e.g. New Wren rating is EF3. After calculating the similarity score, it is much closer to the EF5 prototype than the EF3 prototype. It gets flagged, and can be reassigned)

Very simplified example:

Features are tree debarking severity, ground scouring severity, debris granulation severity.

Smithville has normalized values of [1.0, 0.9, 0.8]

The diagnostic weights for these are [0.7, 0.8, 0.95] (aka "how useful are these for distinguishing categories")

The EF5 core exemplars are something like [0.89, 0.7, 0.8], [ . . .], and the prototype avg based on those is say [0.7, 0.7, 0.5].

Compare Smithville values to all (EF0 similarity = 0.01, . . . EF4 similarity = 0.1, EF5 similarity = 0.99). Smithville most matches the EF5 prototype and is therefore classified as an EF5

tl;dr find out most diagnostic features > pick tornadoes that are closest to that combination > those are averaged into a prototype > tornadoes are assigned to the category whose prototype most closely resembles them
 
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AJS said:
I think a good comparison for Westminster would be Matador. Both absolute menacing Texas beasts that were very likely a lot more intense than the rating they were given.
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A good comparison, and one you are not the first to make. Though Westminster.was weaker than Matador, I believe both tornadoes likely had winds exceeding 300 miles per hour (350 in Matador's case).
joshoctober16 said:
wait what is this texas tech revamp? one your speaking about?
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I believe that is the "New EF Scale" you yourself have been covering.
 
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SpotlightForRareTornadoes said:
We should create an unofficial Fujita Scale known as the Theoretical Fujita Scale (TF-Scale), where we can unofficially rate tornadoes based on not just damage, but by incredible feats that we find appropriate for their TF Rating, like high windspeeds, ground scouring, photogrammetry, and any indicator that factors into the appropriate rating! I've had this idea for a while, and it might help with the debate. For example, the Greenfield EF4 would be a TF5 due to its 317 mph Doppler radar recording, along with Andover in 2022 (264 on Doppler). Matador would be rated a TF4, and Vilonia would be a TF5, due to the extreme damage that was worth more than their current ratings.
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Ive thought about doing this very extensively. It WILL REQUIRE scrutiny, no bias(hard to avoid), and application of new scientific methods derived from things like the Alonsa tornado, or Didsbury. It will take a lot of work, but we need to push this forward, and hopefully create an unbiased, scientific, and analog based rating system
 
NewFoundWeatherNerd said:
Ive thought about doing this very extensively. It WILL REQUIRE scrutiny, no bias(hard to avoid), and application of new scientific methods derived from things like the Alonsa tornado, or Didsbury. It will take a lot of work, but we need to push this forward, and hopefully create an unbiased, scientific, and analog based rating system
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Agreed. We also will have to agree on what each rating does. For example: a TF0 will cause small-medium tree limbs to break off, shingle damage, and extensive damage to larger tree limbs. Cars and other vehicles will be lightly to moderatly damaged.

The reason I say this is because if we don't provide this and just have set windspeeds, then people might try to argue that a TF2 was a TF4, when it did no such damage.
While I am not qualified to talk about the use of scientific methods in rating tornadoes, I think that its a great idea.
 
NewFoundWeatherNerd said:
Ive thought about doing this very extensively. It WILL REQUIRE scrutiny, no bias(hard to avoid), and application of new scientific methods derived from things like the Alonsa tornado, or Didsbury. It will take a lot of work, but we need to push this forward, and hopefully create an unbiased, scientific, and analog based rating system
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If we can do that, then let's do it. This will probably be better than the EF scale. The ratings shall still be unofficial though since the EF scale will still be around.
 
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