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Enhanced Fujita Ratings Debate Thread

Toadvine, AL 1/22/2012:1775655921093.png
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I'm conflicted whether high EF2 or low EF3 would be a better rating for this specific DI. The first image shows the blocks being pushed over, meaning that the home could've easily gone.
 
Waited a while to see if there would eventually be one, but course there’s no reply when I specifically and thoroughly point out what is wrong with a certain someone’s pointlessly pedantic analysis of a single home in Vilonia. What exactly do you even think you accomplished by doing that? Finding a new and exciting way to underrate a DI from a tornado that you yourself acknowledge was an EF5? What does that do for the greater good?

And no matter what your intentions were, because you did that and failed to specify that the tornado itself was an obvious EF5 that had many other potential EF5 DI that were never surveyed, and were never subject to any post analysis, the result is a bunch of poorly informed discord kids basically saying “Vilonia wasn’t an EF5 confirmed!” simply because you didn’t do your due diligence.

What you did is HARMFUL and damaging in the realm of accuracy in the rating process, AND the public perception of the event itself. Hope you’re proud of your pedantic actions, because you’ve accomplished nothing productive, and the outcome is a net negative for the documentation and future perception of Vilonia 2014. Really great job at using your influence for good…
 
buckeye05 said:
Waited a while to see if there would eventually be one, but course there’s no reply when I specifically and thoroughly point out what is wrong with a certain someone’s pointlessly pedantic analysis of a single home in Vilonia. What exactly do you even think you accomplished by doing that? Finding a new and exciting way to underrate a DI from a tornado that you yourself acknowledge was an EF5? What does that do for the greater good?

And no matter what your intentions were, because you did that and failed to specify that the tornado itself was an obvious EF5 that had many other potential EF5 DI that were never surveyed, and were never subject to any post analysis, the result is a bunch of poorly informed discord kids basically saying “Vilonia wasn’t an EF5 confirmed!” simply because you didn’t do your due diligence.

What you did is HARMFUL and damaging in the realm of accuracy in the rating process, AND the public perception of the event itself. Hope you’re proud of your pedantic actions, because you’ve accomplished nothing productive, and the outcome is a net negative for the documentation and future perception of Vilonia 2014. Really great job at using your influence for good…
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uh... who are you talking too? im a bit confused on this post.
 
joshoctober16 said:
uh... who are you talking too? im a bit confused on this post.
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Not really hard to follow. Just pointing out the lack of reply I got after I responded to a previous poster’s “justification” for his deep but completely pointless and non-forward thinking analysis of the Wicker Street home using the Moore 2013 standard for EF5 house damage, despite that standard being largely inappropriate given the semi-rural setting and truly remarkable context. This resulted in more brainless discord minion regurgitation of “Vilonia was an EF4 confirmed!” type sentiments and reinforcement of the current status quo. This was done instead of putting that same energy into analyzing unsurveyed DIs and potentially finding one that would justify an upgrade to an appropriate rating, or explicitly emphasizing to less informed people that the event was very likely an EF5 and that the Wicker Street home is not the determining factor for the rating as a whole. In addition, he failed to appropriately adjust the level of scrutiny applied to relatively small scale construction factors to account for Bridge Creek-like contextual damage.

But that would be far too productive and forward thinking, and could result in a rating that actually fits the exceptional damage intensity and obviously we can’t have that. It’s apparently much more important to expend that energy, intelligence, and influence on reinforcing the current rating which clearly isn’t accurate.
 
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buckeye05 said:
Not really hard to follow. Just pointing out the lack of reply I got after I responded to a previous poster’s “justification” for his deep but completely pointless and non-forward thinking analysis of the Wicker Street home using the Moore 2013 standard for EF5 house damage, despite that standard being largely inappropriate given the semi-rural setting and truly remarkable context. This resulted in more brainless discord minion regurgitation of “Vilonia was an EF4 confirmed!” type sentiments and reinforcement of the current status quo. This was done instead of putting that same energy into analyzing unsurveyed DIs and potentially finding one that would justify an upgrade to an appropriate rating, or explicitly emphasizing to less informed people that the event was very likely an EF5 and that the Wicker Street home is not the determining factor for the rating as a whole. In addition, he failed to appropriately adjust the level of scrutiny applied to relatively small scale construction factors to account for Bridge Creek-like contextual damage.

But that would be far too productive and forward thinking, and could result in a rating that actually fits the exceptional damage intensity and obviously we can’t have that. It’s apparently much more important to expend that energy, intelligence, and influence on reinforcing the current rating which clearly isn’t accurate.
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I'll just chime in and say that while it's extremely frustrating when people use their influence irresponsibly (which seems to be the entire theme of tornado ratings at this point), you have more influence than you realize and are a solid counter to it. Regardless of whether or not you got a response, you made your point and had the stronger argument. Not sure you'll get the concession you're after, but you probably don't need it either. I agree with @slenker 's last point in the debate we had in here recently:

I can say with a very high degree of confidence that if TTU continues to have this viewpoint on thrown objects and whatnot (which does begin from the top-down), they will naturally fall behind and their input will not hold as much value by default anyways, across the scientific community. We can literally see this in the improvements that are being made in the scale right now, we can see this with Enderlin’s EF5 rating, we can see this with LaDue’s presentation that discusses the EF5 rating being too difficult to achieve for homes, and we can see it with the plethora of new groundbreaking research with the Northern Tornadoes Project and Anthony Lyza’s paper on lowering the EF5 threshold.
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Grand Poo Bah said:
I'll just chime in and say that while it's extremely frustrating when people use their influence irresponsibly (which seems to be the entire theme of tornado ratings at this point), you have more influence than you realize and are a solid counter to it. Regardless of whether or not you got a response, you made your point and had the stronger argument. Not sure you'll get the concession you're after, but you probably don't need it either. I agree with @slenker 's last point in the debate we had in here recently:
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while im still confused of what post buckeye05 is talking about, i will say the most of what im seeing for the next EF scale looks good , i only have a problem with the Vehicle DI , why in the world is there 3 DOD of 110 mph for far different severity? , why is there no EF4 rating? , why is there no weaker / stronger resistance?

to make things more confusing they mention EF4 vehicle di ... when showing there's no 166+ mph rating for it? (it max out at 165 mph and has 2 165 mph DOD)

theres kind of 2 other issues but both can be fix by simply changing the wind speed EF rating for Each EF rating for example (200 mph for EF5 starting point)
 
Grand Poo Bah said:
@buckeye05 interested to see what NWS Norman comes up with, but I have a feeling the quick response team is going to be all over this one.
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Not holding my breath, but the contextual damage is already telling me at least high-end EF4 with that kind of scouring. I guess it depends on who’s on the QRT. If it’s someone like LaDue, it could get interesting.
 
buckeye05 said:
I will say this…I haven’t seen scouring in Oklahoma like that since Moore 2013.
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It’s been a long time since we’ve seen such a highly visible, violent tornado in Oklahoma that’s had a lot of footage and coverage around it. It doesn’t happen like it used to. But this was without a doubt a violent tornado.
 
I want to see what the surrounding ground looks like compared to the browning on the ground in that picture of the leveled buildings. It definitely has the look of a grass-ripping violent Plains tornado, based on that one tweet I saw. Definitely the best EF4+ candidate this year though, and definitely a nonzero EF5 chance, if it hit the right structure or if NWS Norman decides to go above and beyond if there's a particular non-conventional DI that really wows them. For now, I'm predicting 190 EF4, until we see a well-constructed home that could plausibly be UB.
 
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slenker said:
I want to see what the surrounding ground looks like compared to the browning on the ground in that picture of the leveled buildings. It definitely has the look of a grass-ripping violent Plains tornado, based on that one tweet I saw. Definitely the best EF4+ candidate this year though, and definitely a nonzero EF5 chance, if it hit the right structure or if NWS Norman decides to go above and beyond if there's a particular non-conventional DI that really wows them.
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Agreed. Union City was a decent ef4 candidate but didn't fully reach it. This tornado blows that one out of the water.
Also, it would be insane if there was an ef5 tornado before an ef4. Have there been any years when that's happened?
 
ThatGuy;P said:
Agreed. Union City was a decent ef4 candidate but didn't fully reach it. This tornado blows that one out of the water.
Also, it would be insane if there was an ef5 tornado before an ef4. Have there been any years when that's happened?
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As far as I know, the only year where (officially) the US' first violent tornado was an F5 is 1966. The Candlestick Park tornado occurred on March 3.
 
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