Possibly, but probably not high-end EF4. The lack of significant debarking (from what I've seen so far) and the fact that it appears to be a tract home are the only things that would likely prevent a high-end EF4 rating though. However, I can't rule out the possibility that more extreme contextual damage could have occurred but hasn't been photographed yet.
I was thinking around 175 to 185 mph.
Agreed. One has to remember that it looks like this was a tract home (aka cookie cutter home). If there's one type of permanent house in the US that can be well-anchored, but still be slabbed by tornado below the violent threshold, it would be tract homes. The problem is that these types of houses tend to be structurally weak, regardless of how thoroughly they are bolted down.
Having done renovation work in homes from this era I'm also always thinking roof attachment, hard to make out if this particular home had a garage or back porch but any of those three things on a house like this can induce failure mode a bit before expected. If we had scoured grass or debarked shrubs that'd be one thing but yeah seems fine to be on the fairly low end just given available pictures. I guess that's one good aspect of the extreme details surveys go into now, makes people more aware of failure modes and construction subtleties that can put residents in more danger than expected
I may argue that this one in Taylor County GA with siginificant ground digging was probably strong.
Yeah that is pretty crazy. It seems like this type of deep scouring is more common than I realized. Philadelphia 2011 was the first time I saw anything like this, but we’ve seen this type of scouring with this one, Mayfield, Capitol, and Tescott since then.
I am a little nervous about tomorrow. Things could escalate quickly as it goes through Bhm metro area.
I’m thinking the lack of wind shear will keep Birmingham area okay, but if a storm gets going, could be very bad, cape is pretty high today like a summer day
