June 21st 2023 Matador TX Tornado Discussion

[Equus]

There is a lot of grandstanding moral high ground after each deadly tornado; "how dare you care about weather and science, you should be crying and mourning!!!" Which, yeah, fatalities (and severe damage in general) are tragedies for sure, and the stories in the aftermath are truly heartbreaking, but I find it far more productive to delve into the science of how said casualties managed to happen in the interest of mitigating future losses instead of just hanging my head and ignoring the science aspect. Learning from them is the only way to cut down on future deaths. Were the casualties in cars, commercial structures, site built homes, mobile homes? Was a reinforced or below ground shelter available (as even a strong site built home can't always reliably prevent fatalities in violent tornadoes such as this)? Was the warning issued in time and successfully received in enough time to seek shelter? Those are important questions from the human aspect we should be asking instead of just screaming at anyone asking questions about the rating and survey details imo. Obviously some are very insensitive in demanding a rating while bodies are still being pulled out but if we can't learn from each event then the next one is gonna be just as deadly.

Of course those details and the survey can wait until after the more human aspects of the tragedy are sorted through, but I really feel like at least a little of it is just grandstanding and trying to get social media points by shaming people who ask about the intensity in the direct aftermath, instead of actually caring about the victims. Unless it's coming from someone actively on the ground helping with the aftermath and seeing the traumatic scenes first hand, it really comes off as needlessly holier than thou, since it should be generally obvious to anyone (except major weenies I guess) that the human aspect comes first and numbers can come later

 

[jiharris0220]

I understand where they’re coming from, people who say that, and they’re right. Lives are for more important than some rating.
However, the argument that the rating simply doesn’t matter is quite poor. Also basically admitting that the scale is so obsolete and irrelevant that people shouldn’t look into it.
Which at this point, I agree with them, because the rating system is utterly useless right now.

 

[andyhb]

Part of the reason Tim Marshall tends to be more reasonable is because he also has a background and degree in meteorology instead of just engineering.

 

[pohnpei]

From Doswell’s blog, probably not still applicable, but food for thought none the less:

I've also been disturbed for many years that the very same Texas Tech. engineers pushing a revision to the windspeeds of tornadoes at the upper end of the F-scale have consistently denied that automobiles and other motor vehicles become airborne in some tornadoes. This denial flies in the face of indisputable video evidence and so is completely unjustified, in my opinion. I've wondered why they're so adamant in disputing the clear fact that motor vehicles can become airborne in F3+ tornadoes. The only plausible explanation I can dream up for such steadfast denial of the facts is that they've been promoting a "saferoom" that would evidently not be able to withstand the impact of an airborne motor vehicle. Such a "projectile" would render useless their standard saferoom.

Source:
Here

and I just noted that they used word "roll" in every case related to vehicle and I think some of these vehicles definitely lifted.

 

[TH2002]

If you're consistently accurate complaints and problems will be minimal; hard to argue provable truth. If OTOH your predictions/ warnings are wrong more often than right, and you can't or won't see obvious damage an untrained public can see, then the problem is you and only you can fix it. The NWS is willingly marching an improper path.

As much as I don’t condone all the hounding of NWS social media accounts, there is one phrase that suits NWS Lubbock perfectly right now:

“Do your job right if you don’t want any complaints.”

 

[Shakespeare 2016]

Part of the reason Tim Marshall tends to be more reasonable is because he also has a background and degree in meteorology instead of just engineering.

He picks and chooses!

 

[andyhb]

Just going to repost this again from the post-Vilonia fiasco because I’m going to guess these people from Texas Tech are amongst the ones being described here.

 

[Sawmaster]

So what advancements in knowledge or science has the use of the EF scale brought us? I can't see where anything is any better than when it was implemented, and if anything the questions of it's accuracy are even more commonplace now.

If there were people on that committee who were pre-biased to believe that no house should rate an EF5 then their compatriots should have thrown them off the committee and found less biased or even unbiased replacements and began the work anew.

The more you study them the worse they look

 

[jiharris0220]

It’s really becoming a question of why even have an EF scale anymore if we aren’t even going to use it properly.
If engineers can make their own personal decisions on wether an ef5 label should even exist then what’s the point?

 

[buckeye05]

Any chance we’re jumping the gun here and they bump it up to EF4 upon further analysis in a day or two? I mean Perryton was EF2 for about a day.

It just seems too absurd for me to accept, and Tim Marshall seemed impressed. It just makes no sense at all.

 

[Shakespeare 2016]

Any chance we’re jumping the gun here and they bump it up to EF4 upon further analysis in a day or two? I mean Perryton was EF2 for about a day.

It just seems too absurd for me to accept, and Tim Marshall seemed impressed. It just makes no sense at all.

Some people like to fake they are impressed with something to make people like you and me to give us hope. Then they turn around and bite you. I can only hope that this is not true what I am saying.

 

[andyhb]

Shakespeare I've seen you going about on Twitter and you're not helping the situation with the attitude in your posts, that's all I'll say. Neither is tornado examiner.

 

[buckeye05]

Some people like to fake they are impressed with something to make people like you and me to give us hope. Then they turn around and bite you. I can only hope that this is not true what I am saying.

The heck are you talking about? That's not what's happening, get real...

 

[warneagle]

Any chance we’re jumping the gun here and they bump it up to EF4 upon further analysis in a day or two? I mean Perryton was EF2 for about a day.

It just seems too absurd for me to accept, and Tim Marshall seemed impressed. It just makes no sense at all.

For me it's really the contextual damage. It's kind of a Potter Stewart type of thing, but I think we all kind of know what the aftermath of a violent tornado looks like when we see it. I totally buy that it didn't hit anything that merited more than high-end EF3 damage in a relatively small town like that but I don't recall many EF3s that produced that kind of debarking/wind rowing/vehicle damage.

 

[Shakespeare 2016]

The heck are you talking about? That's not what's happening, get real...

I wasn't trying to be rude to you.

 

[buckeye05]

I wasn't trying to be rude to you.

I know. The issue isn't that it's rude, the issue is that it's beyond speculative, unrealistic, and absurd to think that's what's going on "behind the scenes". They're not doing it to make weather nerds angry, they're doing it because they truly believe in a ridiculously conservative interpretation of the scale.

But anyway, I guess as soon as we heard "no QRT" we should have known. Seems like they'd already made their decision by that point.

 

[buckeye05]

For me it's really the contextual damage. It's kind of a Potter Stewart type of thing, but I think we all kind of know what the aftermath of a violent tornado looks like when we see it. I totally buy that it didn't hit anything that merited more than high-end EF3 damage in a relatively small town like that but I don't recall many EF3s that produced that kind of debarking/wind rowing/vehicle damage.

That's what I was afraid of. Surveyors honing in on the lowest potential windspeed these structures could have failed, all while completely ignoring the contextual evidence that suggest higher wind speeds. Some WFOs just love using context to downgrade, but are oh so hesitant about using it to upgrade. It doesn't take a statistics genius to realize how that will skew survey results in one direction.

 

[TH2002]

The worst part about bad tornado ratings isn't even the ratings themselves if you ask me, it's the fallout from them and the horrible precedent they set. Imagine a survey team is out there for an unrelated violent tornado and uses Matador as some kind of benchmark for what constitutes "high end EF3" damage - would anything scientifically accurate come out of that? Keep in mind that like with Matador, the contextual damage from the March 31 Keota, IA tornado may have suggested a higher-end violent too, although Quad Cities' survey team did use the one poorly constructed house that was swept away to at least push it to LE EF4. Don't really understand why that shouldn't be the case with Matador considering the contextual damage is just as comparable, if not even worse. I know DVN called in a QRT for Keota and Lubbock stated they have no intention of doing so, so perhaps it's just laziness as was the case with NWS Lincoln and the Robinson, IL tornado.

Not saying low end EF4 would be the most accurate rating for the Matador tornado considering the incredible contextuals, but if LUB really wants to survey "by the book", there's absolutely NOTHING preventing them from calling this tornado a low end 4 as was done with Keota. Perhaps they could push the rating up higher especially if Marshall weighs in with his two cents, but if they can't even properly survey following the unrealistic constraints of the EF scale and somehow manage to be even more stringent, that's beyond sad.

And of course, if Matador was rated appropriately, we wouldn't even be having this conversation...

 

[Sawmaster]

I'm sure to be on many 'hate lists' but I really don't care. I can see clearly and I know what I see. I have said from the beginning that the problem is systemic. And here's some problems with the system we've seen in Matador-

Contextual damage is being overlooked because it's not on the DI list as specifically rateable. Cars rolled or thrown, severely mangled debarking and uprooting of mesquites which are robust compared to many other trees.
Other EF-3's do not have this level of damage to similar or identical objects so I conclude that this has to be above EF3.

Not putting enough work into the survey. I mentioned the 2 cars not looked for, and there's pics of structure damage and debris movement which if studied would also abet an EF4 rating, but nobody wants to go to the trouble of doing their job. And they had Texas Tech helping- or was it they handed it all to them instead? There's plenty of damage to be studied and contextual damage as well which shows very clearly that this was EF4 or higher but you won't see that if you don't look for it.

Nobody is l;earning anything or advancing the science of tornado research by doing what the 'official' people have done here which is to run through a location and check off boxes on a list without considering there's a lot more to see and learn and understand. Shameful.

 

[pohnpei]

One thing I find it's hard to get over is the incredible big inconsistencies between different WFOs and different cases.
Damage like this was rated 170mph (newnan 2021) while Matador got 165mph(if not upgraded any more) I believe probably a little baby can tell which one did stronger damage while this was what we get in reality after careful(maybe) and serious investigations by respected experts.