Rating Tornado Intensity Based on Moblie Radar

[rdale]

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?

 

[STexan]

What does that mean? What actions or policies are based on blind EF scale numbers?

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.

 

[STexan]

I was trying not to say that because I know how some here get all bent out of shape if politics and government enters any discussion here ... which is strange given that government and politics drives NOAA, NWS, SPC, NHC, etc. and that there are many int'l treaties that affects billions of people across the globe including us, that are centered and "climate change" and so many try and connect extreme weather with "climate change".

 

[Rob H]

I think it was Harold Brooks on Weatherbrains that put it rather well: the issue he sees is that people want the EF scale to turn into a single entity that completely defines the strength of a tornado, when it reality it can't achieve that. His thought was to leave the EF scale as is for now, but to continue having the discussion, and allow for measured winds to be captured at the same time. The EF scale still rates damage and no policies have to change, however we now have additional detailed information to assist with scientific research and forging future public policy.

 

[Jake Orosi]

Trying to figure out what the objective downside to mandatory storm shelters for all schools would be.

 

[rdale]

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.

 

[Jake Orosi]

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.

Maybe; but when playground deaths occur usually equipment is fixed/removed/repaired/redesigned in response isn't it? At immense cost.

Meh, but I suppose you're right. Communities these days are reluctant enough to buy their schools up-to-date textbooks and fix roofs that are actively leaking all over their kids; so I guess a tornado shelter is something of a wild fantasy.

 

[Shawn Schuman]

Yeah, it is. I would much prefer better schools than shelters at schools. Tragedies like in Moore influence our thinking and it's tempting to get worked up about doing anything and everything we can to prevent it, especially in schools, but the fact is it's extremely rare. For example, quick, when was the last time more than ten children were killed at a school? April, 1967 in Belvidere, Ill. Now even one child's death is too many, of course, but it illustrates how rare it is. Now think of how many children die in stores and homes and almost every other place but a school. We aren't likely to call for mandatory shelters in all those places.

There have been a total of 291 confirmed deaths in schools.. total. Take out the 69 deaths during the Tri-State Tornado and you've got 222. That's for more than 150 years, and the majority were many decades ago.

 

[Chris Nuttall]

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.

 

[Shane Adams]

There's been a mobile radar running around out there in some form for 17 years now. Either we (a) need to start using all that tax-funded data for something tangible regarding tornado ratings or (b) stop sending them out. I understand earth curvature and the lowest 100 yards and all that crap. But I'm as confident a wind measurement taken at 600 feet off the ground can be extrapolated by all those brilliant scientists down to a fairly accurate surface wind speed as I am in all the research that went into determining exactly what type of winds could cause the damage in each of the 24,967 DIs there are now.

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. If extrapolation of 500m winds down to the surface isn't good enough for you, then how can you sleep at night knowing there's 40,000 DIs and that the research for each one is based on ESTIMATION of wind speed potential?

But at the end of the day, who gives a sh*t what the rating is?

 

[Jake Orosi]

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?

 

[Chris Nuttall]

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?

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.

 

[Chris Nuttall]

I'm not sure if this has been mentioned, but just in case it hasn't, I meant to point out that the EF-scale proposal document that was released by the Wind Science and Engineering Center from Texas Tech Univ. does say on page 14:

"The technology of portable Doppler radar should also be a part of the EF Scale process, either as a direct measurement, when available, or as a means of validating the wind speeds estimated by the experts."

http://www.spc.noaa.gov/faq/tornado/ef-ttu.pdf

 

[rdale]

That's not the official NWS EF-scale document though

 

[Rob H]

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.

I don't know if I'd call getting more accurate EF ratings truly amazing. Who cares if it was EF-3 or EF-5? If you want to study the effects of an EF-5 on structures, you can't look at the El Reno tornado because it never hit anything to do that kind of damage! So then for engineering research you can only look at EF-5s that actually did EF-5 damage, and the whole wind measurement thing ends up being a waste in that scenario.

But at the end of the day, who gives a sh*t what the rating is?

Exactly my point. The only people that seem to care are the people that think Storm Data is this immaculate tome of tornado knowledge and our goal should be to make it better and accurately record everything. Trust me, I've parsed the data, stored it in a database, ingested it into code, run analysis against it, and the biggest thing that sticks out is there's a lot of bad data in Storm Data!