Enhanced Fujita Ratings Debate Thread

[tornado examiner]

Well there it is. The plevna tornado is finalized as an EF3 with peak winds of 155mph.
The 165mph di was likely a mistake.

 

[OH-IOan]

Y'all... they haven't even rated half of its track yet. Let's not immediately say "welp, that's final" when much of the tornado's path is still under surveying.
Nevermind, they did indeed finalize it:

"Tornado started in Pratt County then went into Stafford County before entering western Reno County. Total track of the tornado is around 32 miles with a peak of EF3 and estimated winds of 155 mph which occurred in Stafford and Pratt Counties. The maximum width is around one mile". Weird. I completely disagree with the rating.

 

[tornado examiner]

And I’ve seen hardly anything from the tornadoes near greensburg.

 

[tornado examiner]

Funny that there’s only one EF3 di in nws Wichita’s CWA from that tornado.

 

[OH-IOan]

Wow... not a single EF3 DI on the Reno County side. Yeah, they screwed up this survey pretty bad.

 

[tornado examiner]

Wow... not a single EF3 DI on the Reno County side. Yeah, they screwed up this survey pretty bad.

No there’s one, it’s the mostly collapsed brick home that was among the first damage images to be seen.
EF3 145mph.

 

[OH-IOan]

No there’s one, it’s the mostly collapsed brick home that was among the first damage images to be seen.
EF3 145mph.

Still below the twelve on NWS Goodland's side. Is Wichita usually this conservative?

 

[tornado examiner]

Still below the twelve on NWS Goodland's side. Is Wichita usually this conservative?

They did pretty good with the 2022 Andover tornado and have rated plenty of tornadoes F5 in the past…
The, distant past.

 

[OH-IOan]

See, this is what makes me mad. They do everything in their power not to assign something a higher rating and completely ignore the public when they're called out. I mean, look at this! This is literally below 65 miles per hour!

 

[Ozonelayer]

View attachment 42995
See, this is what makes me mad. They do everything in their power not to assign something a higher rating and completely ignore the public when they're called out. I mean, look at this! This is literally below 65 miles per hour!

What makes me even more angry is that they assigned it as thunderstorm wind/hail damage. This either means that the NWS office is completely incompetent or that they intentionally did this to make it harder to find and point out. Also if the 'residence destroyed' DI is true to its word, then rating it at anywhere below 142 mph, (Lower bound 'all walls collapsed' DI) is not only blantently underrating the tornado, but is also literally 80 MPH below what they should have rated it at a minimum!

 

[tornado examiner]

A second EF3 with max winds of at least 160mph was confirmed to have occurred before the plevna tornado.

 

[OH-IOan]

A second EF3 with max winds of at least 160mph was confirmed to have occurred before the plevna tornado.

Ooh, this could be a revival of the Greensburg supercell where one cell dropped like six EF2+ tornadoes. The recently-surveyed EF3 doesn't go all the way back to Greensburg, so that means there's at least one more tornado that needs surveying. Dodge City’s done a good job so far, Wichita just ruined the other one.

 

[US_Highway15]

A second EF3 with max winds of at least 160mph was confirmed to have occurred before the plevna tornado.

This tracks, since the storm I believe cycled before dropping the Plevna tornado.

 

[Aaron Rider]

Ooh, this could be a revival of the Greensburg supercell where one cell dropped like six EF2+ tornadoes. The recently-surveyed EF3 doesn't go all the way back to Greensburg, so that means there's at least one more tornado that needs surveying. Goodland's done a good job so far, Wichita just ruined the other one.

It's a western Kansas tradition. Let me find the article outlining the eerie parallels between Udall-Blackwell 55 and Greensburg 07

Here we are

Meteorological Mystery: Newly Discovered Information Pertaining to the Udall and Greensburg Tornadoes

Bumped to the top on the 67th anniversary of the Blackwell-Udall Tornadoes. Please see note at the bottom. May 4, 2007, looking north: The ...

www.mikesmithenterprisesblog.com

 

[TheSuckZone]

It's a western Kansas tradition. Let me find the article outlining the eerie parallels between Udall-Blackwell 55 and Greensburg 07

Here we are

Meteorological Mystery: Newly Discovered Information Pertaining to the Udall and Greensburg Tornadoes

Bumped to the top on the 67th anniversary of the Blackwell-Udall Tornadoes. Please see note at the bottom. May 4, 2007, looking north: The ...

www.mikesmithenterprisesblog.com

It was pretty unsettling watching that the other night. Yelled to the wife in the other room that it was tracking and behaving just like 2007.

 

[Grand Poo Bah]

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.

Maybe it's too high in the context of the current application of the EF scale, but considering the current application is underrating tornadoes significantly, this rating realistically aligns better with reality. We should be giving WFOs props when they go outside the established norms in the interest of objective science, not criticizing them.

Extreme contextuals next to slabbed houses can maybe be justified as a requirement for an EF5, but EF4? That's raising the bar way too high.

 

[OH-IOan]

Another EF2+ now confirmed east of Greensburg. Definitely looking like a 2007 repeat minus the EF5.

 

[AJS]

Wait, so how many tornadoes spawned from that Greensburg supercell had an intense/violent signature? From what I saw, three in particular were Greensburg, Iuka, and Plevna.

 

[UK_EF4]

To be fair, I don't really think there was any solidly EF4 structural damage from any of the after dark KS tornadoes, at least that I have seen. Tree damage certainly supports EF4+ intensity, which the tornado obviously was, but as far as I know NWS offices don't really rate tree damage EF4 unless there is structural damage to support it - weird reasoning, but it seems to be protocol pretty much. Maybe with the exception of the Dayton OH 2019 EF4.

 

[slenker]

To be fair, I don't really think there was any solidly EF4 structural damage from any of the after dark KS tornadoes, at least that I have seen. Tree damage certainly supports EF4+ intensity, which the tornado obviously was, but as far as I know NWS offices don't really rate tree damage EF4 unless there is structural damage to support it - weird reasoning, but it seems to be protocol pretty much. Maybe with the exception of the Dayton OH 2019 EF4.

I was under the impression that Dayton 2019 inflicted EF4 damage to some sort of an apartment-style building?