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Severe WX December 10 & 11, 2021 Severe Threat

TH2002

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If only there was a way to confirm this house was well-anchored. Some cleanup has taken place here, but jonathan's satellite imagery confirms it was swept away by the tornado. Probably the strongest EF5 candidate of any home along the path IF it was secured with proper anchor bolts.
Cambridge-shores-damage-home.JPG
 

buckeye05

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But seriously, you can excuse having differences in the opinion of various structures along the path, but you can't excuse leaving entire chunks of the path out of the survey/DAT, like with both Mayfield and Vilonia.
I completely agree. However, the difference between this one and Vilonia, is with Vilonia, we actually have construction info on the homes missed by the survey, and they were definitely EF5 worthy. I can’t say the same with this one.
 

buckeye05

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If only there was a way to confirm this house was well-anchored. Some cleanup has taken place here, but jonathan's satellite imagery confirms it was swept away by the tornado. Probably the strongest EF5 candidate of any home along the path IF it was secured with proper anchor bolts.
View attachment 11560
Yeah that’s one of the Cambridge Shores area homes im particularly impressed with.
 

andyhb

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I completely agree. However, the difference between this one and Vilonia, is with Vilonia, we actually have construction info on the homes missed by the survey, and they were definitely EF5 worthy. I can’t say the same with this one.
But that's the point, have you found any information on the entire neighborhoods that were not included that would suggest changing from EF4 or EF5? The point being is that there are very likely (given the satellite shots) more candidates out there, but we have no ground level view of them. Not to mention these weird blanket ratings that don't seem to take into account the most intense damage in many cases (SW of Mayfield, Cambridge Shores, E of the Lakes, Bremen, etc.)
 

pohnpei

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As much as it’s been talked up, I haven’t seen any evidence of sufficient anchoring at that house. Not saying it didn’t experience 200+ MPH winds, but it was in no way a traditional slab and bolts type foundation. Keeping it below 200 MPH seems reasonable given that information.

With some period of time passing since the event, I’m not feeling like the high-end EF4 rating is as egregious as it was made out to be shortly afterwards. Do I still think it contained EF5 winds? Yes. Do I think it was as big of a screw-up as Vilonia, Chapman, Goldsby, and Chickasha? No way.

At the end of the day, I haven’t been able to find anchor-bolted homes with poured foundations that utilize a continuous load besides the ones in Cambridge Shores. The amount of bad construction along the path is almost overwhelming.
Every tornado from this (Maybe except Vilonia) can have reasons to support their rating standing in their views.
Chickasha's slab had missing nuts and washers.
Goldsby's slab had missing washers or being hit by debris and not swept clean.
Chapman's slab was not swept clean.
I can also say Vilonia's slab had no clear information.You can find legitimate reasons to support these rating because these engineers are mostly reasonable people. They have their reasons.

But I'm really done with these concrete slab+perfect anchoring+perfect contextual+no debris hitting=EF5 rules.
It works, really. But It means you can have one EF5 rating tornado in every one hundred actual EF5 level tornados, maybe more. Because this is the the possibility that an EF5 level tornado have all these things at the same time, conservatively.
 

buckeye05

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But that's the point, have you found any information on the entire neighborhoods that were not included that would suggest changing from EF4 or EF5? The point being is that there are very likely (given the satellite shots) more candidates out there, but we have no ground level view of them. Not to mention these weird blanket ratings that don't seem to take into account the most intense damage in many cases (SW of Mayfield, Cambridge Shores, E of the Lakes, Bremen, etc.)
I hear your point of view, but the stance of “There’s so many missed homes out there, one of two of them must be EF5-worthy just going by probability” is not conclusive enough. I need to see a specific house to prove it before I can get onboard with that, and that 190 MPH house in Bremen, is no E Wicker St home in Vilonia. In that case, it wasn’t even debatable. In this one, the construction is undeniably weird, which knocks it down a few pegs in egregiousness.
 

MNTornadoGuy

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If only there was a way to confirm this house was well-anchored. Some cleanup has taken place here, but jonathan's satellite imagery confirms it was swept away by the tornado. Probably the strongest EF5 candidate of any home along the path IF it was secured with proper anchor bolts.
View attachment 11560
Do you know what street this house was on.
 

pohnpei

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Every tornado from this (Maybe except Vilonia) can have reasons to support their rating standing in their views.
Chickasha's slab had missing nuts and washers.
Goldsby's slab had missing washers or being hit by debris and not swept clean.
Chapman's slab was not swept clean.
I can also say Vilonia's slab had no clear information.You can find legitimate reasons to support these rating because these engineers are mostly reasonable people. They have their reasons.

But I'm really done with these concrete slab+perfect anchoring+perfect contextual+no debris hitting=EF5 rules.
It works, really. But It means you can have one EF5 rating tornado in every one hundred actual EF5 level tornados, maybe more. Because this is the the possibility that an EF5 level tornado have all these things at the same time, conservatively.
Even Hackleburg would have at most one or two EF5 qualified house along its path under today's criteria. But we all know It maintained EF5 strength for a long time. This is how this system works. Even that, for the one in Oak Grove, I can say not enough scouring nearby. Restaurant in Mount Hope? SPB, cleanup work before the photo on DAT taken. No chance of EF5 rating.You can almost always find a reason under this rule.
 

buckeye05

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Even Hackleburg would have at most one or two EF5 qualified house along its path under today's criteria. But we all know It maintained EF5 strength for a long time. This is how this system works. Even that, for the one in Oak Grove, I can say not enough scouring nearby. Restaurant in Mount Hope? SPB, cleanup work before the photo on DAT taken. No chance of EF5 rating.You can almost always find a reason under this rule.
The issue arises when it comes to differentiating what contextual and construction issues have real bearing on the outcome of the rating, and are important clues that actually matter, from pedantic nitpicking. Where one stops and the other starts, is up for debate though due to human subjectivity.

One thing I do sometimes is make a list of supporting and negating factors for a given damage point, and seeing which side of evidence seems have to the most support. For example, Chapman:

Reasons for downgrade:
-Not a totally clean sweep

Reasons for upgrade:
-Poured concrete foundation
-Anchor bolts, which were bent
-Sill plates splintered
-Reinforced concrete stem wall torn away from basement foundation
-Subfloor missing
-Extreme damage to cars, farm machinery, and trees on the property.
-Railroad tracks bent nearby.

As you can see, when you break it down strategically, you can tell what are just excuses or not a major factor, versus a damage point that has multiple reasons for a downgrade. In the case of Chapman, a not totally clean sweep is negated by multiple points of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. My point is, yes an excuse can technically be made to keep every tornado at EF4, and sometimes it’s valid, sometimes it’s not, and it takes compiling all the evidence together to get a clear picture of if a lower-bound rating is appropriate or not.

If I made lists for Chickasha and Goldsby, it’d be a similar result.
 

pohnpei

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Every tornado from this (Maybe except Vilonia) can have reasons to support their rating standing in their views.
Chickasha's slab had missing nuts and washers.
Goldsby's slab had missing washers or being hit by debris and not swept clean.
Chapman's slab was not swept clean.
I can also say Vilonia's slab had no clear information.You can find legitimate reasons to support these rating because these engineers are mostly reasonable people. They have their reasons.

But I'm really done with these concrete slab+perfect anchoring+perfect contextual+no debris hitting=EF5 rules.
It works, really. But It means you can have one EF5 rating tornado in every

The issue arises when it comes to differentiating what contextual and construction issues have real bearing on the outcome of the rating, and are important clues that actually matter, from pedantic nitpicking. Where one stops and the other starts, is up for debate though due to human subjectivity.

One thing I do sometimes is make a list of supporting and negating factors for a given damage point, and seeing which side of evidence seems have to the most support. For example, Chapman:

Reasons for downgrade:
-Not a totally clean sweep

Reasons for upgrade:
-Poured concrete foundation
-Anchor bolts, which were bent
-Sill plates splintered
-Reinforced concrete stem wall torn away from basement foundation
-Subfloor missing
-Extreme damage to cars, farm machinery, and trees on the property.
-Railroad tracks bent nearby.

As you can see, when you break it down strategically, you can tell what are just excuses or not a major factor, versus a damage point that has multiple reasons for a downgrade. In the case of Chapman, a not totally clean sweep is negated by multiple points of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. My point is, yes an excuse can technically be made to keep every tornado at EF4, and sometimes it’s valid, sometimes it’s not, and it takes compiling all the evidence together to get a clear picture of if a lower-bound rating is appropriate or not.

If I made lists for Chickasha and Goldsby, it’d be a similar result.
But these things can be very ambiguous and subjectIve at times.
Like Goldsby, there was legitimate reason mentioned in these pictures and It was really hard to tell for bolts every24" as a reason for upgrade and trailer hitting as a reasing for downgrade, which one takes the lead? These are purely subjective.IMG_20220109_094103.jpgIMG_20220109_094121.jpg
For 190mph place in Bremen, you can also use mixed/untraditional foundation as a reason for downgrade and use concrete slabs swept away in seconds as a reason for upgrade. Tornados are complicated.

Even for Moore 2013, I can say all EF5 rating houses either being straight nailed or toe nailed but in that loop and hit by tornado twice.
 

buckeye05

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Ya’ll are gonna crucify me, but I think a metal mobile home frame being slammed into a house is reasonable for a downgrade. It’s a large, traceable object, rather than the typical vague debris loading excuse.

With that said, I still think there was more than enough for EF5 in Goldsby, but based on different houses besides that one. My issue with that rating is that there were other slabbed, anchor-bolted homes that had no context or construction problems that were still rated high-end EF4, with zero explanation as to why.
 

buckeye05

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One thing I also take issue with is the all to common “bolts missing nuts and washers” scenario. I find it very hard to believe that a framing/construction crew would randomly skip the step of installing washers and nuts on some bolts, while installing them on others at the same house. This seems to be something that comes up at times, and I suspect that on many occasions, the force of the sill plating being ripped from the foundation perimeter is sometimes enough to strip the bolts of their nuts and washers. In other words, I think this is many times a testament to a tornado’s intensity, rather construction errors.

The exception would be homes where literally every bolt is missing their nuts and washers, such as the slabbed house near Paron, AR where three fatalities occurred near the beginning of the Vilonia path. In that case, I truly think it was a construction error.
 

pohnpei

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Ya’ll are gonna crucify me, but I think a metal mobile home frame being slammed into a house is reasonable for a downgrade. It’s a large, traceable object, rather than the typical vague debris loading excuse.

With that said, I still think there was more than enough for EF5 in Goldsby, but based on different houses besides that one. My issue with that rating is that there were other slabbed, anchor-bolted homes that had no context or construction problems that were still rated high-end EF4, with zero explanation as to why.
Another 200mph rating house from Goldsby. I think "contextual not enough" can also be used here. There was areas that enough contextual was there but no house or no qualified house nearby. Basically they just gave rating based on cannikin law.
But I think It actually means If there were qualified house in abundant contextual area, the house damage would be at least as same worse as these contextual not impressive area. But tornados can be complicated I know.
184851e258465b0a0c47bb7f50bf570454055f43_raw.png
 

buckeye05

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Another 200mph rating house from Goldsby. I think "contextual not enough" can also be used here. There was areas that enough contextual was there but no house or no qualified house nearby. Basically they just gave rating based on cannikin law.
But I think It actually means If there were qualified house in abundant contextual area, the house damage would be at least as same worse as these contextual not impressive area. But tornados can be complicated I know.
View attachment 11565
That’s one of the houses that absolutely should have been rated EF5 in Goldsby. Zero valid excuses for that. There was another one towards the end of the path (large one with the tile floor) that was specifically engineered to be tornado resistant but was still given an EF4 rating.

This right here is why I don’t think Mayfield/Bremen is as big of a screw-up as some are making it out to be. In terms of house damage, there wasn’t anything quite like what happened on 4/24/2011. I think some have forgotten just how bad those surveys were, and how much textbook EF5 damage occurred from Chickasha and Goldsby.
 

pohnpei

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That’s one of the houses that absolutely should have been rated EF5 in Goldsby. Zero valid excuses for that. There was another one towards the end of the path (large one with the tile floor) that was specifically engineered to be tornado resistant but was still given an EF4 rating.

This right here is why I don’t think Mayfield/Bremen is as big of a screw-up as some are making it out to be. In terms of house damage, there wasn’t anything quite like what happened on 4/24/2011. I think some have forgotten just how bad those surveys were, and how much textbook EF5 damage occurred from Chickasha and Goldsby.
The one end of the path was the second pic I posted above. The excuse here was no scouring and fence intact. But there was other areas that strong scouring occurred with no qualified house. Scouring now only been used as a excuse to prevent upgrading when It was not present. When strong scouring happened in Crutchfield and Bremen, It immediately meaned nothing in the scale.
 
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andyhb

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That’s one of the houses that absolutely should have been rated EF5 in Goldsby. Zero valid excuses for that. There was another one towards the end of the path (large one with the tile floor) that was specifically engineered to be tornado resistant but was still given an EF4 rating.

This right here is why I don’t think Mayfield/Bremen is as big of a screw-up as some are making it out to be. In terms of house damage, there wasn’t anything quite like what happened on 4/24/2011. I think some have forgotten just how bad those surveys were, and how much textbook EF5 damage occurred from Chickasha and Goldsby.
No, I think neglecting large sections of potentially high end damage is nonsense. It's bad in a different way from Vilonia/Goldsby/etc., but it's bad.

Also the UK Grain Center rating is nonsense.
 
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