During the winter in Saudi Arabia, you occasionally get deep troughs with powerful jet streaks. The Red Sea acts as a significant moisture source even during the winter months. These factors might explain why Saudi Arabia gets these tornadoes.
Stuff like this makes me wonder how many violent tornadoes have touched down in the Middle East and are never documented due to lack of witnesses and terrain to make tracing their paths possible, if a tornado goes over nothing but empty desert highly unlikely you could track it.
That's a great idea! I think I'll go ahead and start it. I agree it's fascinating to see what's happening around the globe.
I think it’s appropriate to make a thread for this so, I’ll be the one.
Good lord. Every new video I see from Hackleburg-Phil Campbell leaves me more and more convinced that this is pretty much exactly what we'd have seen coming out of Southern Illinois if everyone had a smartphone/video camera in 1925.
sad to know that with modern standards this wouldn't even be rated EF4.....that's what so bothering about vegetation being used as a down-grader contextual damage to me. vegetation behaves a whole lot differently to a house in high winds. specially for trees that are bendy and tend to be uprooted rather than denuded and debarked. that there looks like a very special case of very high end structure damage......next too....pretty much ef1 level contextual damage. sure in more common scenario's vegetation has the same level of damage to structures like what you'd expect for violent tornadoes....but there have been case's where some weird physics happen and trees are left with their leaves right next to an anchored home that got slabbed....The 2018 Alonsa tornado is notable for being the only officially rated EF4 of 2018 and the first tornado in Canada to be given an EF4+ on the EF-scale. What got it an EF4 rating was an anchored home that was completely swept away. What likely prevented it from getting a higher rating was the contextual damage next to the house.
The two homes where fatalities occurred in the Tekamah area:
Other photos of damage from Alonsa. The tornado looks a lot like Katie 2016.
Incidentally, another example of a well-deserving F5 that probably wouldn't be an EF5 today - the sill plates were anchor bolted, but the foundation walls were CMU.F5 damage in Niles OH.
Well the EF5 rating has pretty much been retired at this point, "high end-EF4" is the highest we'll ever get from the EF scale anymore.Incidentally, another example of a well-deserving F5 that probably wouldn't be an EF5 today - the sill plates were anchor bolted, but the foundation walls were CMU.
(Although there were also a few slab homes swept away, so I suppose there's a chance it might earn an EF5 today. But probably not with the way things are going.)
its not the scale. its the strictness of the nws pulling every excuse in the book out to nitpick a tornado into the lowest rating possible. they'll alway search for something.
