Why is so much emphasis placed on a tornadoes rating

[Danny Neal]

No Danny I do not like to see devastation or loss of life due to any type of tornado. I am however very fascinated by the awesome power of what a violent tornado can do to a community within a matter of minutes. I find it very disappointing when people lose everything they have to a tornado and people are killed and injured as well and the tornado only receives like an EF3 rating due to flimsy construction. I wish nobody got killed by tornadoes at all but unfortunately it happens every year despite on how much warning is provided.

After re-reading your post this morning, perhaps I overlooked your fascination with the actual rating/deciphering (of) the damage, and not so much that the damage occurred. For that I apologize! I guess I share the same fascination to an extent. Of course seeing destruction is never easy and I am sure we both can agree on that. But once it has happened and it is out of our hands, I believe you have a real knack for trying to interpret what occurred, why it occurred, how it occurred and etc.

I understand Shane's point - he is concerned that some tornadoes aren't being rated as judiciously as others. Tornadoes should never be mis-rated, or prevented from being properly rated, to satisfy some non-scientific, and usually political, reasons.

A side I didn't really think of. My first impression was "damage junkie" almost like he was rooting the wedge to hit the large city which I think we would all agree poses a bit of a problem. However, after re-reading several of his posts in the past (mostly on the EF-scale) I got a feel for what he's talking about and his excitement with ratings and classifications. It is a topic I probably overlook time in and time out. Once a rating is given that's it in my eyes, I never had the will to look into it and figure out why this was rated an (E)F3 and not a 4. Now that I have gotten my hands in building construction within the last year or so (big part of fire service is knowing your enemy I.E. fire and the building) I think I should start reading up on past surveys and newer surveys for that matter, not to judge but to understand what happens in a total building collapse, partial, the fundamentals of the building, and etc.

Greg you out of anyone would know about the non-scientific and political reasons as you are elbow deep into the development and continuance of the EF Scale. It is a shame such things occur and I admire yours and everyone else tenacity involved in keeping the scale effective.

I think we all share Danny's inherent fascination with the power of tornadoes, and we all hate to see human lives and property impacted, but when it happens I think we all share a fascination with looking at the resulting damage survey and (for example) the weird things that seem to be left untouched while other things are gone.

Humans like to label/classify and things and put them in their own little boxes. It gives us some sense of assigning order to chaos. But don't confuse having a sense of chaos with actually having a firm handle on chaos. That is all EF ratings do, as far as giving an accurate picture of the strength of the originating tornado (as opposed to its resulting damage)

I agree with you. As I said, I may have mis-judged what Shane was getting at. As I said above, upon first read it was like he was pissed off because more violent tornadoes don't occur and I guess I drew the comparison to violent tornadoes = loss of property or life and that's something I absolutely can not stand to see. Perhaps I shouldn't post at 2 A.M. anymore when I am half asleep.

Again Shane, apologies to you and my goal wasn't to rake you over the coals, but just a poor attempt at trying to understand what you were saying.

 

[STurner]

I accept your apology Danny and thank you everybody for the comments. Even though I think a tornado should get rated higher or lower than it actually is, is not for me to say. It has to be a tedious process when doing a survey on site. Sometimes tornadic damage photos at times seem to be questionable when I look at detailed damage photos posted. I guess everybody has an opinion and yes I am obsessed with rating tornado damage. I did the EF-kit online and did pretty well. Now most of those photos on this site seemed pretty accurate but a few seemed a little bit too low or too high in my opinion.

 

[Wes Carter]

Shane, I'm somewhat of a newbie myself so take what I'm saying with a grain of salt. But since this forum is open to all ideas I'll throw mine out there to get torn apart. You probably know most of what I'm describing but because this is the beginner's forum I want to make sure that everyone can latch on to my main point.

The Enhanced Fujita scale is just a tool that is used in the study of tornadoes. It is an attempt to determine the relative strength of a tornado based on the damage it did. Unfortunately Dr. Josh Wurman and the Doppler On Wheels truck cannot be at every tornado to directly measure tornado wind speed.

It is much more likely that there will be things in the path of the tornado that can be used to make an educated guess of the wind speed of the tornado. But it's not guaranteed that those things will be in place. And it can be difficult to determine how well a home was constructed once it is completely gone.

If a tree falls in the woods and no one is there to hear it does it make a sound? We have all heard that silly question but for tornadoes there is a similar question. If a tornado occurs and it only hits fields, trailer parks, poorly constructed homes, etc... then how do we properly classify it? We really can't. If a tornado with 250MPH winds hits nothing but a wheat field it might not be rated at anything more than an EF-0 or EF-1.

Because the EF rating is given days AFTER the tornado has passed the EF scale should have little to no affect on how seriously the public takes tornado warnings. I keep my 2 meter radio on during severe weather events and I have never heard a spotter say, "It appears to be a weak tornado." I have heard many times "It is a large and very powerful tornado!" In the Murfreesboro tornado last Friday I heard that same report and took it with a grain of salt. It turns out they were right this time, but I have heard the same report when the tornadoes turned out to only be classified as EF-1's.

My main point is this: The EF scale should not have too much emphasis placed on it by the general public. It is a very useful tool for science and engineering but really for the rest of us it simply is something that fulfills a human need to put everything in a categorized box as Darren Addy pointed out before. Don't let the details bother you on this one. We need to treat all tornadoes with respect. They are all awesome.

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

 

[STurner]

Here is another reason to not always place emphasis on a tornadoes rating. Lets say a mile-wide EF5 tornado with a 20 mile track touches down in a rural area and blows a well-built brick home off its foundation, turns tractors and vehicles into unrecognizable fragments, and strips trees of all their bark. Lets say this tonado killed no one or caused no injury because it stayed out in mainly rural area. Now lets also say a 1/4 mile wide EF2 tornado stays on the ground for 15 miles and goes through a fair ground packed with thousands of people, causes significant damage, kills 50-100 people, and injures hundreds of others. I would hope the EF2 tornado would receive more publicity than the EF5 tornado. A weaker tornado can be just as deadly a stronger tornado.

 

[John Wetter]

I guess I'm failing to see where this conversation is going... A tornado is rated on the severity of the damage, not the impact. The news shows things on a scale of impact, not necessarily damage. The whole point of the EF scale is to assign scientific quantifiable levels to things, the DI's. So, yes, a weak tornado in a populated area will almost certainly get more press than a monster in the middle of nowhere... Impact vs. strength.

 

[Rob H]

Besides the OP, who is putting such large emphasis on a tornado's rating? As others have mentioned, its just a quantifiable way of trying to measure and categorize each tornado's damage. I'm not aware of anything like this, but does the EF classification of a tornado have anything to do with federal or state aid?

Obviously, more powerful tornadoes are more likely to:
a) be seen
b) come from cells that get the attention of many chasers/spotters
c) have an impact on human life
d) be rare

Based on those 4 criteria, higher-rated tornadoes will be more of an "event", whether you're a chaser looking to fill in the EF5 slot on your chase card, an emergency worker trying to rescue people trapped under a torn-apart building, a homeowner who no longer has a home, or someone helping to rebuild after a town has been leveled. I won't comment any further on this, as I don't want to derail things into a discussion of altruism.

 

[Bob Hartig]

It's human nature to view tornadoes with emotion. As someone pointed out earlier in this thread, our culture is one that loves extremes and attaches value to the Biggest and Baddest. Because of this emotional component, a fair portion of the public has historically viewed--and will continue to view--the F and EF scales as a sort of "award."

But the EF scale isn't about pinning medals on certain storms or outbreaks while declaring other tornado events as also-rans. It's simply a tool, a yardstick for measuring tornado damage. A yardstick is objective. An inch is an inch and a foot is a foot, and if you stand up next to a yardstick and it says that you're five-foot-ten, then there's no point in insisting that you're six-foot-four. Granted, the analogy breaks down in that a yardstick is a simple tool with a simple application, where the EF scale is a sophisticated tool designed to be applied in complex scenarios that require a greater degree of human judgment. But the general idea still holds water.

I witnessed my first violent tornado last year. To say it was violent is different than saying it was an EF4 or an EF5. It wasn't; it was an EF3. Had it impacted the town of Hazleton, IA, head on instead of striking it a glancing blow, I suspect the EF rating would have jumped a notch. But in view of what the EF ratings imply in terms of human impact, I'm glad the Hazleton tornado was "only" an EF3. It didn't require a medal for it to have been an impressive and fascinating storm. I got to see it, and the reward of that experience was enough for me.

 

[Chris Carter]

My first tornado was June 22, 2003 in Deshler, NE. It was an F-2, which i regretted because the next day i missed out on the F-4 near Coleridge, NE. When i saw it, i thought to myself, what if this same tornado hit a populated area. What rating would it have? F-3, F-4? It took me a few years later, (Aurora, NE tornado last year) to realize that ratings really didn't matter to me as much as i made them out to be. I realized it doesn't take an EF-4 or EF-5 to destroy a town or take a life.

I realized that the EF scale was just a scale to measure how much damage a tornado made an impact on the economical resources around it. A tornado is a tornado whether its a skinny little tube with wind gusts around 70 mph with a base of only 12 feet, or a monster vortex 1.5 mile wide with winds around 300 mph.

I fear one day that people are not going to tornadoes seriously, based on the EF scale. Most media now a days seems to portray tornadoes on the EF scale according to size. People see a tornado and judge it on its appearance and not on how dangerous it is.

Truthfully i see all tornadoes as the same, the only difference is that some are more dangerous than others. i wouldn't want to be in a field when an EF-0 launches a corn stalk at me at 70 mph.

 

[Elaine Spencer]

I'm glad the Hazleton tornado was "only" an EF3

I was living in Springfield, IL when the tornado hit in 2006; it passed about 2-3 miles north of my location. It was up to a half mile wide at times, stayed on the ground for 70 miles and had the local NWS going live with reports of an "extremely dangerous tornado" bearing down on us. We had to scramble to underground tunnels under the UIS library for shelter.

I was convinced at that moment that it was probably F4 or F5 but was not at all disappointed to find out later it was "only" an F2. After all, that weaker wind speed was probably what kept anyone from being killed or seriously hurt.

Also, from reading the chaser accounts of this storm (especially Skip Talbot's), it seems to me that from a chasing point of view it was just as awesome to witness as any nighttime F4 or F5 would have been. It was a big, long tracked wedge that could be seen for miles through lightning and power flashes. But no one died or was even seriously injured, so you got all of the pleasure of chasing with none of the guilt that might accompany a killer storm like Greensburg, right? So I wouldn't get too hung up on damage ratings either.

 

[Tim Shriver]

"The thing I am getting at is when there is questionable EF4 or EF5 damage from the public or other experts no consideration is even taken."
"A steel-reinforced building made out of concrete and mortar being completely flattened seems really impressive. "

Coming up with a rating for tornado damage takes in considerations
several items. Type of damage, degree of damage, construction and surroundings.

Just because a building is made out of steel concrete and/or bricks does not always
make it stronger against a tornado. Depends on what they used and how they constructed it. Concrete block walls are not good against a tornado
unless it has had concrete and steel rods placed inside the blocks from top to
bottom.
Toe nailed studs in a wall are stronger then end nailed studs.
Does it have straps on the bottom base plate of the walls etc.


There is a system the NWS uses to examine the damage as to type and then
as to degree of damage.

We are currently training with the NWS for Damage Assessment so that we
may help them out in the future in Southern WI.

Very interesting stuff.

Tim

 

[ahaberlie]

Probably just rehashing some things here, but I got this information from an experienced storm chaser..

EF3-EF5 tornadoes can look very similar to a chaser. How strong the winds are won't show up in an image.

The ratings are kind of garbage anyway.. a tornado could be classified as an EF5 if it does EF5 damage in one particular situation (e.g. It was EF5 when it hit a house in the country for 20 seconds.) Also, if an EF5 tornado travels mostly over a rural area and maybe "grazes" a farm house, for example, it could be "incorrectly" labeled as an EF3-EF4 because of the lack of EF5 damage.

Personally, I would like them all to be EF0 or EF1. Do you know what the chances of surviving a direct hit by an EF5 tornado are in the average basement?

Bottom line is, once a tornado gets to an EF3 level, its possible that it could have had EF5 winds, but there might be insufficient evidence to classify it at that level.

Correct me if I'm wrong, please. I'm new to chasing and the details and am here primarily to learn.

 

[Dave Marshall]

No, you're exactly right. It's quite a safe bet that there are *many* tornadoes in history that had winds exceeding 300mph at some point in their life cycle. However, if that point doesn't sync up precisely with an impact on a 'well-built' structure, it won't be rated as an EF-5. It wouldn't be hard at all to imagine that EF-5s (based strictly on wind speed) are two or three times more common than the tornado archives would suggest, simply because of the circumstances of their occurrence.

I personally cannot fathom 'rooting' for an EF-4 or EF-5, and I must assume that anyone that could has simply never been there (reference the 'Witness to death and destruction' thread). I could live out the rest of my days as a chaser absolutely satisfied if I never saw (or even heard of) any tornado above EF-1. The EF-0 and EF-1 tornadoes are the ones you look back on fondly and remember as 'awesome chases', or 'beautiful storms'. The EF-3s, 4s, and 5s are the ones you remember in the middle of the night, in a cold sweat, with the screams of people trapped in the rubble still in your head. Unless you simply don't stop to render aid, or you manage to find a storm that gets an EF-5 rating without impacting a population center, those are images that are with you for a long, long time.

I've never seen an EF-5, and I'll die happy if I never do. I've seen one EF-4 and three EF-3s, along with their immediate aftermath. The total fatality count was at least 13. That is quite enough for one life time.

 

[Tim Shriver]

The F Scale is and has always been about what a tornado destroys in the
way of structures etc. It was never meant to indicate anything else.
I think the method the NWS is using is sound, but the "scale" can always
be adjusted.

As for having a scale for how powerful the tornado is, not using the damage indicators
how would you measure and put to scale a tornado? What aspect or affect would you measure?

Tim