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Enhanced Fujita Ratings Debate Thread

Marios Wallace said:
A tornado I'm kind of surprised about this year was Salado. This tornado has quite a bit supporting violent intensity, including a small set of properties that were completely leveled, and severe debarking to hardwoods in areas, however only received 165. Especially since the Paris tornado received 170. View attachment 16213
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While the tree damage was intense, it didn’t “completely level” any houses. Each had at least a few walls standing, including the ones in the above photos. High-end EF3 is fine.
 
Lake Martin EF4 said:
Maybe that is out of context: "Doesn't mean it's an EF5" if reanalyzed on the current scale.
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Or maybe the 'confidence builders' bit is referring to what can build confidence on an EF5 rating if there is something prohibiting a clear cut EF5 rating? I'm not really sure, it would be interesting to know what the person at the conference said the previous and following slides were about.
 
UK_EF4 said:
Or maybe the 'confidence builders' bit is referring to what can build confidence on an EF5 rating if there is something prohibiting a clear cut EF5 rating? I'm not really sure, it would be interesting to know what the person at the conference said the previous and following slides were about.
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This is what he was meaning. Whoever tweeted that misinterpreted it.
 
The fact that the EF scale is being made an engineering standard mean it'll be much harder to make changes to the scale when needed and will further entrench already poor practices. It also shows the wrongheaded centring of the thinking around it. The Fujita scale was intended to help discern the intensity of tornadoes, not to discern an unrealistically minimal possible windspeed to cause damage against an apparently overly-strict model.
 


And I’ll ask again, why was EXP bound for DOD 10 1-2 Family Residences changed from F5 to EF4? This is the source of all of the controversy surrounding these high end ratings.
 
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And I'll just reiterate that none of those houses to the right of the downtown strip in Vilonia (along Cemetery Street) have DIs in the survey, amongst a host of others. A large section of extraordinarily intense damage with nothing.
 
andyhb said:
REU-USA-TORNADOWEATHER-63.jpg


And I'll just reiterate that none of those houses to the right of the downtown strip in Vilonia (along Cemetery Street) have DIs in the survey, amongst a host of others. A large section of extraordinarily intense damage with nothing.
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Not to mention the Coker Rd and Beryl Rd areas, which were also completely skipped.

Do you think there is any way to bring this up to either higher-ups within the NWS chain of command, or at least the new LZK survey team? I feel like someone needs to say "Hey, this objectively isn't right and there is way too much evidence that this survey was botched, probably intentionally, and the strongest damage likely wasn't even assessed." That is a big deal, and a big problem, and goes waaaay beyond some tornado geeks squabbling over ratings on the internet (which some people have tried to portray it as). Literally EVERYTHING points to a bad survey, and nobody has given an explanation as to why those homes weren't surveyed. Was hoping Grazulis would be the one to stir the pot enough to give Vilonia a serious second look, but that isn't happening apparently. Someone needs to to SOMETHING at some point...

Oh and them using the Sherwood Meadows subdivision as essentially a rating scapegoat was an insult to everyone's intelligence.
 
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