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Enhanced Fujita Ratings Debate Thread

CheeselandSkies said:
Seen a number of posts to this effect recently. Wondering what I missed, I didn't think anything about Grinnell was that impressive. I thought EF3 was a good call for it, although maybe could have gone higher than bottom-end (140 MPH).
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It’s definitely being overhyped by a lot of people, I agree. Definitely no EF5 to me, but definitely under represented by its official rating. It was most certainly a violent tornado. 165 EF3 would’ve been fine considering the fact that it didn’t inflict violent damage by the book, but the contextuals were easily supportive of a tornado that should be rated in the 170-180 range IMO.

I think a lot of people are really astounded by the extreme ground scouring it inflicted at one point in its life, which was definitely also supportive of a violent tornado in its own right. But ground scouring by itself isn’t enough to justify a rating outside of extraordinarily extreme examples, which Grinnell didn’t quite reach in my opinion.
 
slenker said:
It’s definitely being overhyped by a lot of people, I agree. Definitely no EF5 to me, but definitely under represented by its official rating. It was most certainly a violent tornado. 165 EF3 would’ve been fine considering the fact that it didn’t inflict violent damage by the book, but the contextuals were easily supportive of a tornado that should be rated in the 170-180 range IMO.

I think a lot of people are really astounded by the extreme ground scouring it inflicted at one point in its life, which was definitely also supportive of a violent tornado in its own right. But ground scouring by itself isn’t enough to justify a rating outside of extraordinarily extreme examples, which Grinnell didn’t quite reach in my opinion.
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I think very few of us are saying Grinnell should have been an EF5. We all know how the scale is applied. No weeneyism about it.

What I think we are saying is that the scouring documented on this very forum by @Western_KS_Wx was genuinely astounding.

That tornado is not being overhyped, at least, in my opinion.

Way I personally look at that tornado is, not an EF5, but most likely an F5. :)
 
Aaron Rider said:
I think very few of us are saying Grinnell should have been an EF5. We all know how the scale is applied. No weeneyism about it.

What I think we are saying is that the scouring documented on this very forum by @Western_KS_Wx was genuinely astounding.

That tornado is not being overhyped, at least, in my opinion.

Way I personally look at that tornado is, not an EF5, but most likely an F5. :)
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What I meant by people is a general sentiment shared by some of the people I’ve interacted with both IRL and online, not just this forum - I should’ve been more clear on that. During Fujita’s time, I do also believe it probably would’ve been given an F4 or F5 rating based on the ground scouring.

One thing that is important to remember though, is that a lot of the imagery of extreme scouring that I see doesn’t give us a good idea of what the vegetation and ground looked like in the area before the tornado went through, so it’s honestly quite difficult to get a good gauge of how extreme the scouring truly was. Grinnell is the most recent example. It was most certainly violent scouring, but I wish I’d seen imagery of the surrounding grass as well. That would be even better for deciding whether or not this thing was extremely violent (>=EF5 intensity) or not.
 
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Im of the opinion that this year doesn’t have any true EF5s yet, not even contextually. Especially Enderlin, don’t get me wrong, what it did to that train car was impressive, and likely did require ef5 wind speeds to achieve.

But the fact is outside of that, the contextual damage would barely count as low end ef4, let alone ef5, which includes the area around where the train car was thrown.

I don’t think what the tornado did to that train car is unique to what other tornadoes would’ve done had they also hit the same train.
 
It would seem that the home that got exploded was a typical small white farmhouse. Likely on cinderblocks or concrete stem walls. Two stories tall.
Probably unanchored as well. So, yea, yet again it’s very unlikely that it’ll be rated EF4.

Remember when farmhouse’s were used to rate some tornadoes F5?
 
tornado examiner said:
It would seem that the home that got exploded was a typical small white farmhouse. Likely on cinderblocks or concrete stem walls. Two stories tall.
Probably unanchored as well. So, yea, yet again it’s very unlikely that it’ll be rated EF4.

Remember when farmhouse’s were used to rate some tornadoes F5?
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We have not even seen any ground level photos of the house that was destroyed yet. I would wait for more information to come out before we start making assumptions like this.
 
SouthFLwx said:
We have not even seen any ground level photos of the house that was destroyed yet. I would wait for more information to come out before we start making assumptions like this.
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We have something. Not much though. And the house is visible on street view imagery. These kind of farm homes are very rarely anchored good, especially the older they are. Just my two cents.
I make assumptions within reason based on past events. Probably still shouldn’t though.
 

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jiharris0220 said:
Im of the opinion that this year doesn’t have any true EF5s yet, not even contextually. Especially Enderlin, don’t get me wrong, what it did to that train car was impressive, and likely did require ef5 wind speeds to achieve.

But the fact is outside of that, the contextual damage would barely count as low end ef4, let alone ef5, which includes the area around where the train car was thrown.

I don’t think what the tornado did to that train car is unique to what other tornadoes would’ve done had they also hit the same train.
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If a tornado achieves something that mathematically requires EF5 winds, then it's an EF5.

That said, I don't know if it really was a mathematical requirement.
 
Aaron Rider said:
If a tornado achieves something that mathematically requires EF5 winds, then it's an EF5.

That said, I don't know if it really was a mathematical requirement.
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Eh, this is where nuance comes in.

Sure the train feat required ef5 winds to do, but the contextual damage where the feat occurred contradicts this. As in, the contextual damage around the area the train was tossed is hardly low end ef4 level.

The amount of tornadoes that briefly acquire 200+mph winds are far more numerous than official records show.

Same thing with that water tower in mayfield. On paper it required ef5 winds to bring down, but the contextual damage around it suggested lower wind speeds.

Point is, determining if a tornado was truly an ef5 or not isn’t exactly a black and white case.

There needs to be more than one indicator of damage to coincide with the feat.

In this case, other than the instance of the throw train cart, nothing around it suggests the tornado was anything stronger than low end ef4 at best.
 
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