F or EF?

[Indy]

I'd like to add two additional comments. Fujita died in 1998 therefore in my opinion nobody had permission to use his name in the new scale. Why would they use his name in the scale? So they can continue to use the "F" in the name to influence public opinion.

"None of the tornadoes recorded on or before January 31, 2007 will be re-categorized."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enhanced_Fujita_Scale

This is where the deliberate misinformation campaign comes in. They aren't reclassifying old tornadoes and they used the Fujita name so they could mislead the public into thinking there are more high end rankings than there used to be. The Kansas tornado this year was absolute proof of that. It only took a few months before that setup was abused when it was called the first FIVE since the OKC tornado. They don't want to reclassify them because that would blow the entire reason for cooking up this EF scale which btw reads like F which is I think another reason for doing it the way they did it. How is F spelled out? "ef"

Typical NWS/NOAA fraud.

[ARCC]

Birmingham F5 damage to school.



Greensburg EF5 damage to school.



Now unless there was a mass conspiracy that weakened very strong schools at the exact time the EF scale was implemented, otherwise I'd think your point is bogus.

*Edit, here is what the school looked like.

[IL Storm Spotter]

I wonder in the future, will they make an AEF scale (advanced Enhanced Fujita) LOL!!!

[NWIASpotter]

Indy, I'm not sure where you get your conspiracy theories from about all of this. But, research has been going on for several years about this new scale and Fujita himself back in 1992 came up with a temporary fix that he wanted to take place to his scale because he recognized that the original scale had several flaws. So Dr. Fujita himself was one on the side to create and enhance the scale from when he originally created it...

Yes the Kansas tornado is a unique situation; some people believe the tornado should have only been classified EF4 while others say it was an EF5 based on the school and water tower. I've personally talked to Dan McCarthy about this scale and he gave a presentation on how the scale is improved and why it was done. And I've seen plenty of damage from tornadoes in person as well; so I think I know what I am talking about being a meteorology student and attended several severe weather conferences.

[MatthewCarman]

The problem is even if you have a slow or strong F3/F4 that destroys a school according to the F and EF scale it is still a F5 because of the damage done. Am I correct? A slow moving F3 could do as much damage as a F5 tornado and since you can not tell the damage apart from a slow devestating tornado to a strong fast tornado it is easier to give it a higher rating. Is there a way of telling if a slow destructive tornado or a strong F3/F4 could do as much damage as a F5? I think winds should be added for the criteria in deciding what rating a tornado gets as a tornado with very strong winds can still do alot of damage regardless of how much damage they did. Having that said there is now way to realy measure windspeeds in a tornado unless you can magically put something inside the tornado everytime one forms.

Many people say Greensburg was one of the worst tornadoes of the 20th century. I disagree. There has been some realy violent tornadoes that did not do as much damage that could have been far worse if they had hit a town.

[NWIASpotter]

The problem is wind speeds cannot be used unless you can somehow measure every tornado and its' wind speeds not only at the ground, but then at every height that it hits some sort of structure. There are several flaws in the new scale, just like the old one, and until we come up with some flawless technique that can judge tornadoes that don't hit any structures and can take into account the speed of the tornado in some cases this is the best we can do...

[Indy]

I'm sorry ARCC but your case doesn't hold water. In the first pic it appears the school was at the edge of the damage path while in the 2nd pic the school seems to be well within the damage path. Look at all those houses in that 2nd pic that are clearly in the damage path and clearly still standing. That is not F5 damage.

This is F5 tornado damage.

http://www.srh.noaa.gov/oun/storms/1999050...mage/kjdam1.jpg

http://www.srh.noaa.gov/oun/storms/1999050...mage/kjdam2.jpg

http://www.srh.noaa.gov/oun/storms/1999050...mage/kjdam3.jpg

http://www.srh.noaa.gov/oun/storms/1999050...mage/kjdam4.jpg

This is NOT damage of a FIVE.

http://www.patsyterrell.com/2007/05/greens...o-pictures.html

Look at those pics. For the most part structures were NOT completely wiped out. That is the difference between a real FIVE and a new FIVE. The damage in Greensburg was not absolute despite the area being inside the tornado for quite some time. A real five would have cleaned everything down to the foundation especially after camping over an area for an excess of a minute. The Greensburg tornado was a worst case scenario. It was massive in size and slow moving. The saving grace was that this storm wasn't all that strong. Had it been a real F5 the loss of life would have likely been much higher.

Don't buy into this new scale. It is all about public perception of change. That is why they didn't bother to reclassify older tornadoes. The new chart loses value if you do that.

[MatthewCarman]

I always though a school would need to be demolished to get a F5 or EF5 rating? I am leaning towards a strong slow moving EF3 or a EF4 based on pictures with some buildings still standing but then again I am no expert.

[ARCC]

I'm sorry ARCC but your case doesn't hold water. In the first pic it appears the school was at the edge of the damage path while in the 2nd pic the school seems to be well within the damage path. Look at all those houses in that 2nd pic that are clearly in the damage path and clearly still standing. That is not F5 damage.

This is F5 tornado damage.

http://www.srh.noaa.gov/oun/storms/1999050...mage/kjdam1.jpg

http://www.srh.noaa.gov/oun/storms/1999050...mage/kjdam2.jpg

http://www.srh.noaa.gov/oun/storms/1999050...mage/kjdam3.jpg

http://www.srh.noaa.gov/oun/storms/1999050...mage/kjdam4.jpg

This is NOT damage of a FIVE.

http://www.patsyterrell.com/2007/05/greens...o-pictures.html

Look at those pics. For the most part structures were NOT completely wiped out. That is the difference between a real FIVE and a new FIVE. The damage in Greensburg was not absolute despite the area being inside the tornado for quite some time. A real five would have cleaned everything down to the foundation especially after camping over an area for an excess of a minute. The Greensburg tornado was a worst case scenario. It was massive in size and slow moving. The saving grace was that this storm wasn't all that strong. Had it been a real F5 the loss of life would have likely been much higher.

Don't buy into this new scale. It is all about public perception of change. That is why they didn't bother to reclassify older tornadoes. The new chart loses value if you do that.[/b]

Actually most of the damage in those pics you have provided are F3-F4, according to the scale you cling to so much.



F4 damage.

A tornado in Moore, OK on 3 May 1999 demolished this house (foreground) down to a short pile of debris on and around the foundation, with no walls standing. In order for this scene to be rated F5, the debris must have been swept away, leaving behind evidence that the house was well-attached to its slab. [The brick house in the left background suffered F3 damage, with a mixture of inner and outer walls removed.] This tornado caused an immense amount of F4 damage on its path through the southern portion of the Oklahoma City metropolitan area, and several locales of F5 damage.[/b]

Ok now on to F5. this was one of the 18 or so total houses with F5 damage in the Moore, OK F5.

This is classic F5 damage. The Bridge Creek/Moore, Oklahoma, tornado of 3 May 1999 leveled this house, swept the foundation almost completely clean, shredded the house remains into small pieces and scattered the debris downwind to the northeast (rear). The house was relatively well-contructed with slab-to-wall anchor bolts evenly spaced around the bottom plate. Some of those bolts can be seen in this photo, protruding upward from just inside the edges of the concrete slab.[/b]

Ok, now lets do some thinking, now with is just by sight, we don't know how well the houses are built. Now in your pics you said was "F5 damage" I do note something very apparent, the lack of concrete foundations, also the big piles of debris left.

So lets look, which pics look more like the F5 damage pic they provided about, Indy's,



or the houses here.



This is near the water tower where the F5 damage was recorded.

Secondly in all of this, as people has said many times, a tornado does not contain a perfectly symmetrical wind field, and just as in the Moore, OK tornado, very few structures were rated F5, despite the intense damage they caused.

MatthewCarman, not quite, a structure that strong would take far more than an F5 to level, unless it was structurally weak, and this school certainly wasn't, yet it still was hit hard.

[drwilkow]

Yes, I concur with the old F5 "clean sweep" visual observation where brick structures with concrete slabs are wiped clean and in some extreme cases asphalt and concrete roadways are sucked up too.

It's confusing when the NWS changes the rating scales after so many years with the old Fujita scale system.

Why did the NWS change it anyway?