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Enhanced Fujita Ratings Debate Thread

Grand Poo Bah said:
Bringing this over from the severe weather thread. I couldn't disagree more. The lower bound for DOD 10 "slab swept clean" is 165 mph, the expected wind rating for DOD 9 "all walls collapsed" is 170 mph, and the upper bound for DOD 8 "most wall collapsed" is 178 mph. I see an entire town full of these DODs WITH extreme contextuals. 170 mph EF4 is extremely verifiable, even without including some of the most incredible scouring we've seen in a very long time (why wouldn't it be included?). Hell, if anything, it's the bare MINIMUM acceptable rating for this tornado.

Seriously, whoever said ratings "have to be structural"? It's a made up rule no one ever approved of, but everyone adopted anyways. The entire point of rating tornadoes is to use every resource available to make a best guess at the true wind speed. It's absolutely bananas to continually shrug and say "this is the best we can do" when we were literally doing better than this in the 70s 80s and 90s haha.

Here are your EF4 DIs

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Going below the thresholds of the scale to assign a 140 mph EF3 rating is ridiculous. These offices are going rogue and defying an EF scale that is already fundamentally broken in so many ways, and somehow making it worse. I seriously don't get it.
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It’s funny how they make the rules and still insist on breaking them.
As soon as I saw the Grinnel tornado was preliminary EF2, I knew it was over for that one getting a fair rating.
 
155 to a MBS? Dodge City over here being pretty liberal. I would bet 100 bucks that if the tornado crossed into the Wichita's WFO bounds, it'll be Dodge City that gives it the EF4 rating. Their Greensburg survey was great.
 
OH-IOan said:
155 to a MBS? Dodge City over here being liberal! I would bet 100 bucks that if the tornado crossed into the Wichita's WFO bounds, it'll be Dodge City that gives it the EF4 rating. Their Greensburg survey was great.
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I get that it’s a long track, but I still have not yet seen any slabbed homes (pre cleanup) or anything like that…so…we may not get it still unless they wanna break the mold of not rating tornadoes EF4 off of tree damage alone.
 
tornado examiner said:
I get that it’s a long track, but I still have not yet seen any slabbed homes (pre cleanup) or anything like that…so…we may not get it still unless they wanna break the mold of not rating tornadoes EF4 off of tree damage alone.
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Has the tornado's entire path been videoed via drone? Based off the general direction of the EF2 and EF3 DIs, and assuming the tornado didn't wobble and moved in a straight line, there are several rural homes in the direct path.

Edit: A home on the intersection of West Lake Cable Road and South Netherland Road looks like it may have been hit, are there any photos of damage from that? I thought I saw a post somewhere above about severe tree damage on Netherland.
 
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Also Marion’s 190mph di is gonna be a topic of controversy in a different way apparently.
But, structural engineers surveyed it.
So…something had to have been seen because usually those guys tell surveying offices to go lower, not higher.
The max is “supposed” to be 170mph.
 
tornado examiner said:
Also Marion’s 190mph di is gonna be a topic of controversy in a different way apparently.
But, structural engineers surveyed it.
So…something had to have been seen because usually those guys tell surveying offices to go lower, not higher.
The max is “supposed” to be 170mph.
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Yea, I wonder about whether it was too high (never thought I'd say that!), the damage seemed a bit lower than 190. At least they didn't lowball it by 30 miles per hour or something like that.
 
Not like it matters much, but the 190mph rating if Marion is definitely too high. The shrubs next to the house are completely fine, the house itself has no anchor bolts, honestly not sure how much integrity engineered wood would give to a structure.

And the biggest disagreement with the rating is the tree damage, I tried to find even the smallest speck of debarking, but there’s none, and it’s not like these are particularly sturdy trees, or winter/early spring when tree bark is hardened.

From an accuracy standpoint, 170mph would’ve been the right call, but again, an ef4 is an ef4, so it doesn’t really matter.
 
I just have to ask:

Why are tornadoes rated just off of damage? Why are they not rated off of wind speed like hurricanes? That's my entire problem with the rating going based of of trees, shrubs and structures.

Edit: lol, quick like by OH-IOan
 
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