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Severe WX December 10 & 11, 2021 Severe Threat

buckeye05

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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.
Fair enough. In terms of competent, thorough surveying, and leaving no stones unturned, this has been an utter disaster. Also, yeah the UK Grain Center building was horribly under-rated, so I have to agree with you on those points.

But I'm simply speaking in terms of what information we have available regarding the construction quality of homes that have been photographed or surveyed so far, and in that regard, this one doesn't quite stack up to the other "shoulda been an EF5" EF4s throughout the past decade or so, and I think that is a fair assessment that is supported by quite a bit of evidence.
 

buckeye05

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Did the Grain Center portion of the Research Center contain interior walls, or did it contain a more open interior floor plan? That is an important factor. Not saying EF3 is appropriate for that structure either way though.
 

buckeye05

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Does anyone know of any cases of vehicles being tossed/thrown >500 yards by the Mayfield tornado?
I haven't been able to confirm any confirmation of this, but what it did to that tanker and other vehicles in Mayfield leaves little doubt that it was probably capable.
 

andyhb

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Does anyone know of any cases of vehicles being tossed/thrown >500 yards by the Mayfield tornado?
See this is the other thing, the lack of information about things like this is sad. I would not be surprised at all if it happened in places like Mayfield and Bremen. I would rather have the information and argue over the ratings versus have very little and be forced to speculate.
 
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What really unacceptable here was we would probably never know these ground digging and asphalt scouring, driveway scouring things without all these dedicated enthusiasts. No any mention about these things by Paducah.
Yeah, there should be no "mysteries" about what did and didn't happen during major tornadoes in this day and age, not the way there was in the old/pre-Fujita days.

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andyhb

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This is very analogous to all of the missed DIs in Vilonia, including potential EF5 candidates.
 
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Fair enough. In terms of competent, thorough surveying, and leaving no stones unturned, this has been an utter disaster. Also, yeah the UK Grain Center building was horribly under-rated, so I have to agree with you on those points.

But I'm simply speaking in terms of what information we have available regarding the construction quality of homes that have been photographed or surveyed so far, and in that regard, this one doesn't quite stack up to the other "shoulda been an EF5" EF4s throughout the past decade or so, and I think that is a fair assessment that is supported by quite a bit of evidence.
We tornado damage enthusiasts have seen thousands of different photos of what violent tornado damage looks like. We have spent countless hours looking over these photos and in some cases for many years. It is not like we look at these damage photos for our health.
 

buckeye05

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I think it is pretty obvious that the lack of contextual damage info is a symptom of increasing "engineering only" focused surveys.

It's falling more and more on nerds like us to make sure this kind of thing is documented. If that's the case, so be it, as there are a tooooon of people like us out there who are obsessed with documenting these kind of incidents of remarkable contexual damage. The online weather community did a great job at picking up on remarkable phenomenon that the surveyors missed with this one. Hopefully, people will continue to step up to the plate if contextual damage continues to be omitted.
 

pohnpei

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I also feel that some post of engineers before hinted that they thought the water tower in Mayfield was a likely EF5 qualifier. One engineer on Twitter said things like how house damage nearby water tower was not enough and another reported mentioned they don't know the reason why It failed except for simply high winds. There was some quite impressive tree damage near the water tower btw.
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buckeye05

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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 like Crutchfield and Bremen, It immediately meaned nothing in the scale.
THIS! A million times this. If context can be used to downgrade, it should also be used to upgrade. The absurdity of saying scouring means nothing in one situation, and then the lack of it having enough significance to drop an entire rating below the expected value, is simply ridiculous. The amount of contridiction and lack of logic associated with this practice is astounding. I am absolutely fine with context being used in surveys, and I encourage it in fact, but has to go BOTH ways! It doesn't take a genius to see the contradiction and redundancy of only using context for downgrading.

Imagine a scenario where a survey team finds a slabbed, anchor-bolted house, but no grass is scoured, the car is parked undamaged in the driveway, and all the debris and contents is thrown into a pile immediately next to the foundation. Then imagine the survey team deciding on an EF4 rating, and when confronted about it they said, "There is no DI for cars, grass, and debris patterns, so we couldn't factor those things in. EF4 it is." Would that go over well? Absolutely not. Higher-ups would lose it and demand a re-analysis and downgrade. That illustrates a huge double standard, and a huge problem.

Bottom line: Use context both ways, or don't use it at all. As long as it is only used to downgrade, it serves no purpose besides skewing all survey results in a certain direction.
 

eric11

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I haven't been able to confirm any confirmation of this, but what it did to that tanker and other vehicles in Mayfield leaves little doubt that it was probably capable.
And this one I believe, hard to recognize it
mmexport1641753080041.jpgmmexport1641753082230.jpg
It's weird to see completely intact cars and cars which mangled beyond recognition all came from the same parking place. Also there's a combine thrown over 100 yards and tangled around a semi-truck while the rest Combines remained unharmed.I'm assuming some extreme subvortices were the contributor to these damage.
 

MNTornadoGuy

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And this one I believe, hard to recognize it
View attachment 11614View attachment 11615
It's weird to see completely intact cars and cars which mangled beyond recognition all came from the same parking place. Also there's a combine thrown over 100 yards and tangled around a semi-truck while the rest Combines remained unharmed.I'm assuming some extreme subvortices were the contributor to these damage.
Those cars were moved to a yard of tornado-damaged cars. It's not where it was originally located.
 

eric11

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Those cars were moved to a yard of tornado-damaged cars. It's not where it was originally located.
Yeah I got that, but it's safe to assume that those severely mangled cars and unharmed cars might have come from the same place, at least, they're not far apart. It's not usual to see the level of car damage varies so much in just one place(Moore, Vilonia, Joplin these solid EF5s mangled almost every car they encountered, on the other side, less violent tornadoes but solid EF4s like Jonesboro 2020 and Gallatin TN F3 from 2006 did only one or two extreme car damage and left the rest slightly damaged or unharmed).When it comes to the Mayfield case, you can find dozens of extreme, EF5 level car damage with others being EF0-EF1 level car damage.
The embedded Combine in a semi truck I metioned above
mmexport1641753528625.jpgmmexport1641753530433.jpgmmexport1641753534399.jpg
 
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And this one I believe, hard to recognize it
View attachment 11614View attachment 11615
It's weird to see completely intact cars and cars which mangled beyond recognition all came from the same parking place. Also there's a combine thrown over 100 yards and tangled around a semi-truck while the rest Combines remained unharmed.I'm assuming some extreme subvortices were the contributor to these damage.
While it is hard to say on rating vehicle damage, would you believe this type of vehicle damage is associated with high-end EF4+ tornadoes? I like some other people's opinions so I feel like I am not second guessing myself.
 
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