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June 21st 2023 Matador TX Tornado Discussion

Shakespeare 2016 said:
I don't care I would rate it EF5. I am sick and tired of this crap that we need a well-built home to be completely swept away to get an EF5 rating. Use the contextual damage as it is more telling than a well-built house.
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Yup…as soon as I saw that I let out a sigh of uggghhh…cause now they do have the excuse of, “not well built, no ef5” crap….
 
I don’t really have any problems with Tim. Other than Westminster and Vilonia, he knows what he’s talking about and I fully agree that this tornado by no means did any ef5 conventional damage.
Like what’s been said plenty of times now, this tornado is a clear cut example of a “contextual ef5”.
What I do to distinguish between a subpar structure that took on ef5 damage vs one that didn’t is look at what happened around it.
A subpar house destroyed by an ef5 would have its debris granulated into small fragments with completely debarked trees/shrubs near it.
A subpar house swept away by a tornado that wasn’t a ef5 would leave behind large fragments of debris or entire chunks of it left behind, and any flora would’ve only sustained light or no debarking.
 
Tim's post an hr ago on FB.

I visited the Marshalls (no relation) at the north end of town. Their family of 5 survived in the small basement while the house and barn were wiped clean. An SUV in the metal barn was tossed into a field. Another vehicle is missing except for the engine block. Only the rear axle of their dump truck was found. The ground south of the house was partially scoured of vegetation and mesquite trees were debarked.

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atrainguy said:
Pics from Tim Marshall of the Dollar General.





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The destruction is similar to that of the Home Depot in Joplin, which was given a low-end EF4 rating by Marshall.
joplin-ef5-damage-anchor-bolts-jpg.10751
 
Judging by what he is saying, Tim is quite impressed by the damage in Matador. He's not being dismissive from what I've seen so far. Also, notice he has mentioned the violent contextual damage to grass, trees, and vehicles multiple times now, so at the very least he doesn't appear to be doing the whole "engineering only approach" that people associate him with.
 
One of his comments regarding the vehicle damage admits even himself, couldn’t recognize some of the vehicles caught in the path.
Anyone remember the last time he mentioned something like that?
 
When Tim said he could never rate a slab home EF5 ever again he lost me. You can't sanely claim to be objective when you're biased, and when the NWS didn't ask him to leave after that, I knew they were no better. This is EF5 or mighty mighty da&% close to it- so close that an objective decision will be needed, and there won't be one available.

On the Dollar General, this is 'lightweight steel' construction approximately the same as the Home Depot in Joplin. Twisting or bending the beams/columns doesn't take too much force, but pulling an anchor bolt out of concrete is impressive if it's 3/4" which I believe it is. Even 5/8" would not yield easily. This would have originally been "L" shaped with the short leg being 3-4 inches long, and the steel is supposed to have some hardening. There have been problems with sub-standard steels and hardening in counterfeit bolts sourced from China in recent years, so if this is going to be an important DI they need to test that bolt.
 
Well to be fair, the EF scale was never an “objective” way to measure tornado intensity.
Every NWS office has their own way of determining ratings based on structural damage, for better or worse.
I don’t think it’s fair to clap on Tim specifically for something that’s been going down hill for a while now.
Im of course talking about US infrastructure.
 
jiharris0220 said:
Well to be fair, the EF scale was never an “objective” way to measure tornado intensity.
Every NWS office has their own way of determining ratings based on structural damage, for better or worse.
I don’t think it’s fair to clap on Tim specifically for something that’s been going down hill for a while now.
Im of course talking about US infrastructure.
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Nobody else I know of made any statement like this or I'd note them too. And yes, the whole system is a problem too mostly because of the people in it.
 
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