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Severe WX April 12-15th, 2018 Severe Potential

Mike S

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Gustnado damage report for Guntersville Lake 4/14/18

https://nwschat.weather.gov/p.php?pid=201804171514-KHUN-NOUS44-PNSHUN

Public Information Statement
National Weather Service Huntsville AL
1014 AM CDT Tue Apr 17 2018

...NWS Damage Survey for 4/14/18 Event...
...Marina Damage on Lake Guntersville Determined to be from
Gustnado...

.Little Mountain Marina Damage...

Estimated Peak Wind: 90 MPH
Path length /Statute/: 400 Yards
Path width /Maximum/: 20 Yards
Fatalities: 0
Injuries: 0

Start date: April 14, 2018
Start time: 211 PM CDT
Start location: 7 SW Langston, Marshall County, Alabama
Start Lat/Lon: 34.4594 / -86.1905

End date: April 14, 2018
End time: 211 PM CDT
End location: 7 SW Langston, Marshall County, Alabama
End Lat/Lon: 34.4589 / -86.1865

KHTX radar data show two gust fronts intersecting as
move across Lake Guntersville near the Marina at approximately
2:11 PM.
 

buckeye05

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The Elon/Amherst tornado has been upgraded to 150 MPH EF3. Much better. I have no idea what they were thinking with the initial survey.

Edit: Reading the DAT. Initial surveyor wanted to go with EF2 due to poor anchoring with only single nails along the foundation. However, slabbed modern frame homes with poor to no anchoring are still considered EF3 by most WFOs. Obviously, someone had a word with the lead surveyor. They legitimately may have just not known how to appropriately compensate for structural defects when using the scale.
 
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Equus

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Ok, that makes a lot more sense. Considering the lowest bound estimate on slabbing a frame home on the official EF scale documentation is 142, staying 130mph EF2 would have been lowballing beyond the official boundaries of the EF scale, even. I'll give it to NWS Blacksburg for perhaps not having a huge wealth of experience rating strong tornadoes, but yeah, unless I'm not remembering well, slabbing poorly anchored homes in some WFOs has been rated as high as minimal F4/EF4 in past events (which may be too high, but I disgress) This upgrade goes a little way towards keeping ratings consistent, but the extended La Plata revival of sorts still seems frustrating. Medium EF3 seems quite appropriate for that level of damage; ranking the destruction of even poorly anchored frame homes the same as the destruction of mobile homes seemed kind of weird, to say the least. The only frame home obliteration that seems appropriate at mid EF2 is a 'slider' that simply falls apart when pushed over... but the damage aerials seemed to indicate this was not the case here, with small debris scattered a bit downwind instead of just piled in a heap.

But I'm just an armchair observer. I could have it all wrong. And an event report for a particularly notable gustnado is really cool.

(As a related side note, I see that the Blacksburg CWA portion of the Greensboro tornado, in Rockingham county, has been bumped from EF1 to a moderate EF2. This is the track portion where the mobile home was lifted and thrown into oncoming traffic with serious injuries in a vehicle, and about 20 other homes were significantly damaged, so... at least two tornadoes in their CWA got a significant rating bump yesterday. Must have been quite a bit of behind the scenes discussion in that office)
 
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