Yup, absolutely. A while ago he was definitely dismissive of it and I explicitly recall a tweet he made in which he was asked if it deserved an EF5 rating, and he said no and brushed it off as a “very high-end EF4”.
A short while later I made a long post on this forum explaining why
@Saltical Wx and others in that circle of influence were completely missing the boat by ignoring the remarkable, Bridge Creek-like contextual damage in Vilonia, and how instead honing in on extremely small scale details like bolt placement and porch overhangs in an attempt to validate the official EF4 rating at that location, despite it being very obvious that this was not the appropriate rating, was not the right move to make. His defense was that he was simply using the Moore 2013 criteria for EF5 house damage, even though the Moore surveyors explicitly said that the “Moore definition” for EF5 was not to be used across the board, and that they used that criteria to account for a dense suburban debris field, which obviously doesn’t apply to Vilonia. I did my best to convey the point of “just because you can, doesn’t mean that you should”, and that Saltical was not modulating his scrutiny of the Wicker Street home in a reasonable manner given the caliber of contextual damage. And perhaps more importantly, I did my best to convey that what he was doing was extremely harmful in the realm of the ongoing collective push for accuracy in real world EF Scale application, and that using his influence to prop up/defend a rating that was clearly a huge, historic mistake was a terribly misguided decision given the influence he has. He said that he personally believed that Vilonia was an EF5, but apparently failed to make this point clear. As a result, a ton of discord kids who are unable to read between the lines or think for themselves just started basically regurgitating “Saltical says Vilonia was an EF4, so it was an EF4”.
But in any case, it seems like that “circle” finally recognizes the Vilonia rating for the huge, historic mistake that it truly was, albeit years too late. I don’t know if it was my critique (I do see several of the exact pics I cited in my side of the debate in Nick’s post), or if they somehow overlooked all the remarkable evidence until now, but at least they finally have pulled their heads out of the sand.
If Saltical would have used his influence to point out how EF4 is not an appropriate rating for Vilonia, and used his skills and intellect to make a case for EF5 using the numerous missed damage points, or put work into calculating the lofted fertilizer tank, it would have been greatly productive and a huge step forward. Instead he used it to reinforce a terrible decision made by the LZK survey team. It’s real shame, but I am glad that they finally see Vilonia for what it really is.
I hope that group/circle is beginning to see that the NWS does get things wrong sometimes, and that there’s no reason to jump to the defense of ratings like Lake City or Vilonia. They defended both of them initially, only to later backpedal and take the dissenting side. Sure their gripes about TalkWeather and how we handled these differences are valid, but I hope they start to see that when we have a dissenting opinion about a rating, sometimes it’s valid. I want to trust the NWS rating process, and when I was first getting into the topic, generally I did and sometimes went on the defensive of questionable ratings that I probably shouldn’t have because I simply wanted to trust their word. But 16 years later, it’s clear to me that there is a big problem with how the EF scale is applied. I hope that Nick and Saltical are starting to see that moving things forward in the EF Scale/damage surveying field of study isn’t just about toeing the line and defending the official word. It’s more important to question the official word when it’s clearly wrong, and be willing to be that person who presents a well-argued dissenting opinion and challenges the status quo, even when it may be a bit uncomfortable or even controversial to do so. Being the teachers pet and defending bad ratings will never initiate the changes we need to see in this field of study.
