rdale
EF5
I just don't want skewed data that may affect future actions and policies.
What does that mean? What actions or policies are based on blind EF scale numbers?
I just don't want skewed data that may affect future actions and policies.
An EF5 hits Moore, and within an hour there were calls from citizens and politicians for mandatory storm cellars for all schools and businesses, as well as politicians trying to blame the Moore tornado on man made climate change ... all this within an hour or two of an "extraordinary" weather event. Make EF5's go from a rare occurrence to an almost routine and expected occurrence in the course of a season, and I guarantee you will see a lot of knee-jerk reactions from all sorts of people, groups, governments, and organizations. That's what I mean.What does that mean? What actions or policies are based on blind EF scale numbers?
Trying to figure out what the objective downside to mandatory storm shelters for all schools would be.
The immense cost. Especially for older buildings where it is incredibly immense. More kids have died from playground injuries in the last 5 years during school than have died from tornadoes in the last 50.
Every one is caught up in the rating. The only people that care about the ratings are meteorologists, climatologists, engineers, insurers, and weather weenies (not using this as a derogatory term), but mainly for research or record keeping purposes. Sure, I guess it can serve as guide for engineers to build better structures. In the grand scheme of things, if damage is done and people are hurt or killed, the human impact is the same, which is a point that is being lost in this debate.
If researching and record-keeping is superfluous and beside the point, why bother to scientifically study storms at all? Warn every storm; if someone dies it's a tragedy and if nobody does who cares?
This is why science loses me; right when it gets on the cusp of something truly amazing, a debate rises up because some people want to split hairs over crap that there's no way to know if it's truly accurate.
But at the end of the day, who gives a sh*t what the rating is?
So, you're telling me that rating the El Reno tornado EF-5 versus EF-3 is going to directly lead to an improvement in the warning system? I did not say that researching and record-keeping is pointless. It is important. However, if 20 people are killed by a tornado, does it matter if that tornado is rated EF-3 or EF-4? I appreciate the passion on both sides of the argument, but my point is that it seems like a small thing to argue over given the death and destruction. Don't get me wrong, as a meteorologist, the final rating is important to me, but I don't have a strong feeling either way about the use of radar in determining a rating, so I'm not going to get bent out of shape. It's definitely an interesting debate, and exciting, too, because it's demonstrating a great advancement and application in technology. In the area I work, the odds of me ever having a mobile radar measurement are fairly low. Yes, I have Doppler envy. There I said it.
I guess it all depends on your audience. Maybe I'm looking at things too broadly. I tend to always look at things on the large scale. How does the vast majority of my customers, city/state/county officials, media, and the general public view this? Five years from now, the majority of the general public probably won't remember what the El Reno tornado was rated or that mobile Doppler radar measurements were used to upgrade the rating.
I, on the other hand, am interested purely in the scientific data aspect. It doesn't matter to me what or whether the public thinks about EF-ratings. EF-ratings were not designed with the public in mind, but with scientific data collection in mind.
The EF rating is a wind speed classification, not a damage classification. An Doppler-measured EF-5 tornado that has "only done EF-3 damage" because there happened to be nothing in the damage path that would've lasted through any but EF-5 winds, is an EF-5, because the rating isn't about the damage, it is about the wind speed. The damage a tornado causes is usually how we estimate the wind speed; but over time this has caused laypersons to confuse the method with the purpose. And that persisting confusion is the only reason this debate is even occurring.
The debate is in fact reminiscent of the recent brouhaha over the IAU's reclassification of Pluto as a minor planet rather than a true planet. There wasn't a single argument for Pluto's retaining planetary status that wasn't an appeal to emotion or tradition, two things which should never direct the course of scientific progress.
The prioritization of radar measurement in the classification of tornadoes by wind speed is, similarly, only being opposed with appeals to emotion or tradition. The difference is, these people are even mistaken about the nature of the "tradition".
Actually, they were designed with engineering, and public safety, in mind - as Fujita's work was funded by NRC grants in the early 1970s. Ted wanted to classify storms by strength, but the only option he had was to survey damage, so that's how the scale was designed.
The F scale was a damage classification with associated and *estimated* wind speeds. The EF scale was introduced to better incorporate different types of structures/materials and degrees of damage. A tornado that does "EF-4 damage" can't be directly compared to a tornado with measured winds in the EF-4 damage range because the EF *estimated* winds haven't been rigorously verified. It's apples to oranges, and that's not a useful scientific comparison.
That's not the official NWS EF-scale document though