Justin Turcotte
EF5
Originally posted by Chris Nuttall
The F scale is a damage scale. Nothing more, nothing less. Yes, it could be used to estimate winds inside a tornado. But nothing more than that.
I do not know very much about conducting damage surveys. Maybe our techniques are good enough to make better determination of wind speeds. I think this is why the NWS was looking to revise the Fujita scale.[/b]
Ok, Fujita devised his scale on the basis of wind speed. The F-scale is really just a mathematical equation that connects the Beaufort scale to the Mach scale with an F12 being Mach 1.
![fscale.jpg](/proxy.php?image=http%3A%2F%2Fsnrs.unl.edu%2Famet898%2Fturcotte%2Fmisc%2Ffscale.jpg&hash=fcb8a22d3d45892bd15498155f17cacc)
Since we usually arn't able to directly measure wind speed within a tornado we are forced to infer it through observed damage. So yes, the F-scale is being utilized as a damage scale but it was mathematically devised as a wind speed scale.