Enhanced Fujita Scale?

[STurner]

I was not trying to make it seem that way because who knows what the windspeeds were. I was just stating that the DOW clocked those windspeeds inside those tornadoes. It just seems as though different types of windspeeds inside cause different types of damage whether their lower windspeeds or higher windspeeds.

 

[Patrick Marsh]

I was not trying to make it seem that way because who knows what the windspeeds were. I was just stating that the DOW clocked those windspeeds inside those tornadoes. It just seems as though different types of windspeeds inside cause different types of damage whether their lower windspeeds or higher windspeeds.

Yeah, but there is a huge difference between "clocking wind speeds" at 10 m AGL (where official wind speeds are recorded...not to mention on the order of where the damage actually occurs) and 100 m AGL (rough order of magnitude as to where the DOW's lowest recording is made). Friction plays much more of a role at 10 m than at 100 m.

Keep in mind the DOW captures an instantaneous speed of whatever provides the backscatter...which isn't necessarily "wind" (in fact wind doesn't backscatter at all). In the two examples you provided, there was a lot of debris floating around, which was providing a whole lot more backscatter than say a cloud droplet. Here is a greatly exagerated example: I could go outside on a calm day and sneeze -typical speed of a sneeze is greater than 100mph but very, very short-lived based on a quick google search. If the DOW was recording near my face at the precise moment I sneezed, it would capture a 100+mph wind speed, whereas a second before or after the sneeze it would be near calm. This is why reported wind speeds are typically averages.