Enhanced Fujita Ratings Debate Thread

[Grand Poo Bah]

Hurricane Melissa currently has wind gusts exceeding 215 mph. Praying for everyone currently in the path. It's going to be devestating.

If it makes landfall at this strength who thinks the wind damage will resemble an EF5 tornado? Will entire forests be flattened and debarked? Cars and trains tossed? Ground scouring/trenching? There will certainly be a vertical wind component in the mountains too.

 

[Central Ohio Wx]

Hurricane Melissa currently has wind gusts exceeding 215 mph. Praying for everyone currently in the path. It's going to be devestating.

If it makes landfall at this strength who thinks the wind damage will resemble an EF5 tornado? Will entire forests be flattened and debarked? Cars and trains tossed? Ground scouring/trenching? There will certainly be a vertical wind component in the mountains too.

Certainly not scouring/trenching, as those are caused by a central vortex. Melissa is just a giant storm, and can’t drill into the ground in a way tornadoes can.

 

[Grand Poo Bah]

Certainly not scouring/trenching, as those are caused by a central vortex. Melissa is just a giant storm, and can’t drill into the ground in a way tornadoes can.

What do you believe is driving the "drilling" mechanism? The instantaneous nature of the winds?

 

[Central Ohio Wx]

What do you believe is driving the "drilling" mechanism? The instantaneous nature of the winds?

I’m obviously not qualified to say for certain, but it I had to guess if would be the force of a smaller, more compact rotating vortex causing the ground to displace, as it has more concentrated energy. As opposed to that of a linear wind event, which doesn’t have a central “point” at a given location and isn’t drilling down on a specific point.

We still don’t know why scouring and trenching happens exactly, so it’s all speculation and could be completely wrong.

 

[slenker]

I can’t say for certain either but I’ll throw an idea in, the pressure gradient in a tornado is A) way tighter and more sharply defined than a hurricane’s is, which leads to B) the forces a given object experiences, especially within the core, are far more extreme than those felt in a hurricane. At the most basic level, the force an object feels is equal to its mass times its acceleration, and the acceleration an object experiences is higher if the pressure gradient and forces from winds are more tightly defined, especially in a faster moving tornado. That’s also why the sledgehammer effect exists, I believe.