You could have pointed out 50 house with EF5 damage with contextual evidence to John Robinson and it still would have gotten rated a high-end EF4. This guy probably would have rated tornadoes like Jarrell, TX and Smithville, MS high-end E/F4. Though I would hope if something like that ever happened there would be intervention.
I'm sure they could come up with some galaxy-brain logic about Jarrell being too slow-moving like they did with Harper. I'm honestly shocked Joplin was rated EF5. It was a lot less impressive than some of the tornadoes that got left at high-end EF4.
Holy crap, Hesston seems to have done some ground scouring and quite impressive vehicle damage, and the almost complete sweeping away of the cement factory is pretty crazy (assuming it was well-constructed). Would love to get more information on the Goessel tornado, still not quite sure why Fujita gave it an F5 rating.
I believe the Joplin tornado deserves an EF5 rating but there have been a number of high-end EF4's that were as EF5 worthy if not more so as Joplin. They include Chickasha, Goldsby, Vilonia, Rochelle, and Chapman.
I am not exactly sure of the Hesston, KS tornado either though if I had to pick which one deserved an F5 rating it would be that one. It is still kind of sketchy though.
Joplin blew out concrete basement walls in a couple of homes and was able to damage a tall hospital beyond repair; it actually shifted the concrete rebar-reinforced foundation several inches off its base and left the hospital in such bad condition it had to be torn down; I'd say that's definitely EF5 worthy.
Yeah, I think it'd be pretty borderline today. But the vehicle damage and the fact that it was supposedly more intense to the SW are points in its favor. I'd group it alongside Greensburg as a tornado that was quite likely more intense outside of the large(ish) town that it hit, but still high end EF4/F4 in that town. I just wish there were a better view of the cul de sac that was completely swept away. And any view of the damage near Burton, KS(8 miles SW) where it was, by all accounts, very very intense.
I'm not even joking when I say that there really were meteorologists who wanted to rate Jarrell as an F3 because of the fact that it was slow-moving. As far as I know that was also the only reason the 5/12/04 Harper, KS tornado wasn't rated F5.
Yeah, it was pretty incredible as it was 3/4 mile-wide and caused like low-end F4 damage and when it narrowed to around 300 yards wide it caused at least high-end F4 damage.
Who would only rate that F3? The F5 rating is backed by Tim Marshall.
I know the Jarrell, TX tornado stayed over the Double Creek subdivision for like 3 or 4 minutes. The Harper, Kansas tornado stayed over the same area for over 5 minutes and caused Jarrell esque damage. I think it may have been the longer duration of the Harper, Kansas tornado over the same area that may have led to a high-end F4 rating instead of F5.
I know the Westminster, TX was slower moving and produced among some of the most incredible ground scouring I have ever seen. It was rated a high-end F3 but should have been rated high-end F4 based on a number of things.
I might buy that reasoning if the ratings were tied to empirically-confirmed wind speeds rather than estimates, since you could actually come to more concrete (no pun intended) conclusions about how much time a tornado would have to remain over an area to cause a certain category of damage. But when it's all estimated anyway, that seems arbitrary to me.
Rainsville was extremely violent in its own right, but gets overshadowed by Philadelphia, Hackleburg, and especially Smithville. The thing about Rainsville is that it was rated EF5 mainly based on contextual damage. Surveyors were understandably very hesitant about upgrading based on this, so it wasn’t upgraded from EF4 to EF5 until June. The homes it swept away, while anchor-bolted, had cinder block foundations rather than poured concrete or slabs, so the structural damage it produced wasn’t quite as impressive as Smithville or Hackleburg. However it did manage to:
