EF scale vs. F scale.

[Greg Stumpf]

So basically, if I know the old scale, I know the new one?

Exactly!

And now you have many more damage inidicators to use, whereas in the past, it was mainly just single/double family residences. Plus, there are ways to fine-tune the rating for differences in construction quality.

 

[mike scantlin]

excellent post greg.

 

[Terry Tyler]

i really like the ideas of the DIs and DODs...

when the EF-scale come out, i wasnt so sure of what to think at first glance...it looked really complex and had so many aspects of damage rating scales for every kind of building you could think of...i took the time to read it, and understand it, and now i really like it...

it is just like the old scale...only better...but i agree with shane in the fact it should remain "F" something instead of "EF" something...but the name is just a little idiosyncracy that im sure they will iron out...and if not, hey...its just a little "E" in front of the "F"...

the way i see it...that whole team of wind enginneers and damage surveyers know alot more than me on the subject, so ill just take their words for it, and use the new scale...

 

[jladue]

I just wish they'd call it the "F-scale" like they always have....change the windspeeds/criteria/whatever you want....but not the name. "EF-whatever" compared to just the basic "F-whatever" seems overkill to me. The windspeeds are all changed, people know it's been 'enhanced'. But I'm like Bob....who cares.....we thought it was right for 30 years and it wasn't........I don't see why this one won't be wrong in a few years either, because all the engineers and meteorologists researching all of this still have jobs....which means we don't know everything yet.

Besides, why do we rate tornadoes at all? Weak, strong, and violent is pretty much all we need to know. The important thing is learning how to better warn for them, which science has done a wonderful job of the past few decades.

Shane, We have a new rating system so that Engineers and Meteorologists can argue about it for the next 30 years.

Seriously, there was enough evidence to show that wind speeds were overestimated for the higher degrees of damage to well known structures like houses. Why not stick with the F-Scale? If we did, then the ratings would have to go down. The F-Scale is a wind speed scale. That is, the ratings are related to wind speed ranges by an equation. See this page
for how the F-Scale is used to bridge the gap between the Beaufort and Mach scales. Well, nobody wanted to decrease the ratings and so out came the EF-Scale.

Down the road the wind speeds will almost certainly be adjusted again. I bet they'll be done when we can relate mobile radar data to 3 second gusts at 10m AGL. The research is underway but it's not there yet.

 

[Doug Lee]

Shane, We have a new rating system so that Engineers and Meteorologists can argue about it for the next 30 years.

After reading that comment and some of the other threads, I thought back to junior college. I took a couple of business courses and the instructor was fond of a quote often circulated among managers:

"You can stack all the economists in the world end to end and still never reach a conclusion!"