and another example, just yesterday . . . .
See this? It's another example how it would be useful to have very specific wind chart info for details such as lifting and throwing a human body, though there are some other data points to rely on.
--1. (from
http://www.2theadvocate.com/news/15576037.html The article mentions both Independence and Tangipahoa, so based on SPC storm reports, I suppose it's this, which isn't complete at all: 1945 INDEPENDENCE TANGIPAHOA LA 3064 9051 WEST OF HIGHWAY 51...TREES AND POWER LINES WERE BLOWN DOWN. EAST OF HIGHWAY 51...DAMAGE WAS REPORTED AT A HOSPITAL WHEN A SMALL PORTION OF THE ROOF WAS PEELED OFF...AN (LIX))
A tornado that touched down Tuesday afternoon near Lallie Kemp Regional Medical Center fatally injured a 51-year-old woman by picking her up and flinging her against a parked car, hospital officials said.
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So, the tornado was strong enough to pick her up, how strong was this? If she wasn't picked up, wouldn't one think this was only EF-1 damage?
--2.
The high winds triggered by the storm uprooted trees and knocked limbs into power lines, blocking at least 15 roadways throughout Tangipahoa Parish, parish Office of Emergency Preparedness Director Dawson Primes said.
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Heck, by the Beaufort scale ( I assume can't quite be trusted these days?), trees uprooted only counts for 55-63 mph which wouldn't even make an EF-O (65-85)! But let's go with 91 from the EF scale (assuming hardwood:
http://www.spc.noaa.gov/efscale/27.html), making it EF-1 or F1 if old school (73-112), unless of course were these large trees uprooted, then even an old school F2 (113-157)
But then you add some more details here:
--
The tornado also damaged four buildings in the rear of the hospital’s campus, Pack-Hookfin said. The roofs of two buildings used for offices were damaged and an unoccupied storage trailer was flipped onto its side and left leaning against another building, Pack-Hookfin said.
No estimate of damage was available Tuesday afternoon, she said.
The tornado also picked up and moved 20 to 30 vehicles in the parking lot of the hospital, Primes said. Tree branches scattered in the front parking lot had broken the white wooden fence in front of the hospital.
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Ok, we'll assume this is an institutional building and with the roof gone, that's 86 mph (
http://www.spc.noaa.gov/efscale/20.html) back to borderline EF-1.
The overturning of the trailer seems equivalent to perhaps a single unit mobile home flip, so still EF 1 around 100 to 110 (
http://www.spc.noaa.gov/efscale/3.html) borderline F2, and I don't see anything for EF scale on autos.
So, not counting the lifted person and autos, we've got strong EF-1 damage, maybe borderline EF-2. So does one conclude then that say, 110 mph is enough to lift someone up in the air? After all, F1 (73-112) scale claims "Automobiles overturned." And yet I thought people would not go airborne out in a Cat. 2 hurricane? (peaking at 110?). So, exactly at what point does somebody go airborne? Is it the nature of rotating winds at 110 to be much more likely to produce uplift than a straight-line gust eh? And is it easier to lift and flip a car than a person becaue of greater surface area and the space below the vehicle? So, I think there's a degree of vagueness here, and I--and I would think others--would like a more precise incremental scale. Meanwhile, I'm going to go with winds of 105-115 mph for this tornado, an upper-end EF1 to a marginal EF-2. The article wasn't too specific about degree of roof damage. Just chattering in the dark here, but I'm curious about people's thoughts and what resources I might be missing. [But . . . there is that ambiguity about the cars "picked up and moved"--what does this mean? After all, old school F3 mentions "heavy cars lifted off the ground," so one would think F2 lifts not-so-heavy cars, putting us in the 113-157 range, so maybe should we up this to 113-120 max? Anyhow, why doesn't the EF scale include autos?)
