Dec. 10-11 Severe Weather

[Santa Clause]

Ef 5 is a thing of the past. Very very very rare for a tornado to end up in a place with extremely well built structures…so think we have seen our last of them.

[notsomadscientist]

9 minutes ago, Stebo said:

Yes mr. 10 posts, everyone talking about the rating totally doesn't care about those who have been killed or injured. It is totally that.

Thank you for proving my point. People being rude to each other over this, no matter what side you are on, is wrong. 10 posts or 1000 makes no difference if you are just poisoning public discourse and has nothing to do with the discussion going on. 

[Stebo]

9 minutes ago, notsomadscientist said:

Thank you for proving my point. People being rude to each other over this, no matter what side you are on, is wrong. 10 posts or 1000 makes no difference if you are just poisoning public discourse and has nothing to do with the discussion going on. 

Right, you come barging in acting like no one cares. Like no one was going to comment on your 'fart in an elevator' post.

[CryHavoc]

Mods, please feel free to delete if it's too ranty or off-topic, but...

If indeed the tornado is "only" rated an EF4, on the grounds that it didn't impact a structure of sufficient build material to award the "5" rating, I think the system could be very problematic.

Yes, it's true, families don't care about ratings. But we, as scientists, should. The entire purpose of the rating system is for future safety.

If the rating system is built such that the only way to award a 5 rating is for the tornado to hit a modern, metropolitan area with structures that are brand new and built to the most rigid standards, it could actually be a relatively discriminatory system regarding less well off communities.

I do not believe the best solution for the Fujita scale is to say, "Sorry, your community wasn't wealthy enough to have a a building to meet our (increasingly stringent) standards." That is, IMO, not the best application of the reason we have rating systems.

At that point, assessors are essentially saying it's impossible for an EF5 tornado to go through a rural town like the ones I grew up in, because we have absolutely nothing close to a modern medical center like in Joplin, or anything of the like. Most of the homes in the area where I grew up were constructed closer to the civil war than present day. The idea that an EF5 can't hit where my parents live because it's a small old town is a blind spot in our science, IMO. We can and should do better to get more data.

I sincerely believe that we have more than enough technology in 2021 to be far less narrow with what constitutes EF5 level damage, and that the public (who DOES pay a lot of attention to these ratings) is not served well by being overly stingy with the "5" designation.  I'm deeply frustrated by the idea that the EF5 has suddenly become some kind of unattainable rating, unless it strikes a town center or an area where wealthy people who can afford to have extremely well-built homes live.

Imagine telling someone that their town is just too poor to convince the assessors that the tornado was strong enough to damage a rich person's home in a similar manner.  Unacceptable.  Completely unacceptable in my view.

tl;dr: there should be a way to discover whether or not a tornado was of sufficient strength regardless of where it strikes, with the one potential exception of it striking a completely open relatively barren field. If it hits where people live, we should do EVERYTHING in our power to know how strong it was, even if it only strikes a single home.

[Stebo]

Just now, Akeem the African Dream said:

this live report on TWC from Des Moines doesn’t look awful with wind 

mike Seidel estimates winds not over 50 

wrong thread

[DaveNay]

I saw this recently posted on Reddit from a John Deere repair shop in Kentucky.

[CryHavoc]

1 minute ago, DaveNay said:

I saw this recently posted on Reddit from a John Deere repair shop in Kentucky.

I dunno, doesn't look like a Ferrari or Lamborghini, so likely just EF1 damage being shown here.

[DaveNay]

1 minute ago, CryHavoc said:

I dunno, doesn't look like a Ferrari or Lamborghini, so likely just EF1 damage being shown here.

Now I'm imagining Clarkson sitting in his Lambo when an ear of corn flies through his windshield.

 

[janetjanet998]

19 minutes ago, CryHavoc said:

Mods, please feel free to delete if it's too ranty or off-topic, but...

If indeed the tornado is "only" rated an EF4, on the grounds that it didn't impact a structure of sufficient build material to award the "5" rating, I think the system could be very problematic.

Yes, it's true, families don't care about ratings. But we, as scientists, should. The entire purpose of the rating system is for future safety.

If the rating system is built such that the only way to award a 5 rating is for the tornado to hit a modern, metropolitan area with structures that are brand new and built to the most rigid standards, it could actually be a relatively discriminatory system regarding less well off communities.

I do not believe the best solution for the Fujita scale is to say, "Sorry, your community wasn't wealthy enough to have a a building to meet our (increasingly stringent) standards." That is, IMO, not the best application of the reason we have rating systems.

At that point, assessors are essentially saying it's impossible for an EF5 tornado to go through a rural town like the ones I grew up in, because we have absolutely nothing close to a modern medical center like in Joplin, or anything of the like. Most of the homes in the area where I grew up were constructed closer to the civil war than present day. The idea that an EF5 can't hit where my parents live because it's a small old town is a blind spot in our science, IMO. We can and should do better to get more data.

I sincerely believe that we have more than enough technology in 2021 to be far less narrow with what constitutes EF5 level damage, and that the public (who DOES pay a lot of attention to these ratings) is not served well by being overly stingy with the "5" designation.  I'm deeply frustrated by the idea that the EF5 has suddenly become some kind of unattainable rating, unless it strikes a town center or an area where wealthy people who can afford to have extremely well-built homes live.

Imagine telling someone that their town is just too poor to convince the assessors that the tornado was strong enough to damage a rich person's home in a similar manner.  Unacceptable.  Completely unacceptable in my view.

tl;dr: there should be a way to discover whether or not a tornado was of sufficient strength regardless of where it strikes, with the one potential exception of it striking a completely open relatively barren field. If it hits where people live, we should do EVERYTHING in our power to know how strong it was, even if it only strikes a single home.

I actually had a similar long comment earlier but lost it and didn't fell like retying it with all the IA stuff going on

short version:

What percent of homes are "well built" it can't be that many.  

We had  a couple $300,000 homes reduced to clean slabs here in the Washington IL Tornado...high end F4

so not only does a tornado have to have winds of 200+MPH it has to magically hit the small percent of structures that are "well built" to get an EF5 rating in that respect

no way many of the F5s in the 1970's in a different era would be EF5's today

 

 

[CryHavoc]

9 minutes ago, janetjanet998 said:

so not only does a tornado have to have winds of 200+MPH it has to magically hit the small percent of structures that are "well built" to get an EF5 rating

 

 

 

Don't forget, even if it does this, the assessors will look at building construction and manage to find fault with it.  "There was a dent in the wall from 2016 which caused a structural weakness and therefore cannot be considered worthy of an EF5 rating."

This was an EF5.  Period.  Maxed out violent wedge, long-tracked tornado accounting for numerous records including G2G, a TBSS on radar, lofted debris to 35k feet, foundations swept clean, scouring, vehicles tossed massive distances, trains thrown from their tracks.

So measurements of actual wind speeds doesn't matter (el reno 2013), radar measurements doesn't matter, buildings leveled/decimated doesn't matter, foundations swept clean doesn't matter, incredible instances of one-off damage doesn't matter...

Where is the science, here?  At what point does the EF scale become entirely useless?  It's not consistent, it's not uniform, it's not predictable, and it's changing year-on-year to be more temperamental and stringent.

We may see 1-2 EF5s in a 50 year period if this is the new standard.  The Fujita Scale is one of the few things I know in all of science that favors human-eyed-interpretations of an event over ACTUAL scientific data and measurements.

There's very little science left to it.

[Tezeta]

26 minutes ago, DaveNay said:

I saw this recently posted on Reddit from a John Deere repair shop in Kentucky.

My type of glory hole 

[notsomadscientist]

28 minutes ago, Stebo said:

Right, you come barging in acting like no one cares. Like no one was going to comment on your 'fart in an elevator' post.

I made a comment about the discussion you reply with a catty personal attack. Don't care if you've been here 20 years, are the site admin, or a mod, it was petty. I was trying to add positively to the discussion. Even if it was not the most profound or highest quality comment at least it was pertinent and not another shit off topic comment (kind of like this one, I guess). I'm not going to derail this thread anymore. 

[andyhb]

Well, there it is. Also if we're expected Jarrell-level damage, I doubt EF5 is really achievable.

[Buckeye05]

No NWS office is going to question Tim Marshall. Rating is pretty much locked in now.

[Witness Protection Program]

On 12/13/2021 at 4:51 PM, Stebo said:

Not a lie...

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/kentucky-tornado-factory-workers-threatened-firing-left-tornado-employ-rcna8581

The lie was that some workers weren't allowed to leave or shelter because of their race.  Twitter doing what it does.

[hlcater]

we're never going to see another EF5 rating ever again.

[Santa Clause]

Guaranteed some of the 70s storms were not Ef 5 if using today’s standards. It’s getting silly.

[Buckeye05]

5 minutes ago, Wmsptwx said:

Guaranteed some of the 70s storms were not Ef 5 if using today’s standards. It’s getting silly.

Hell, add the EF5s of 2011 too. I think the only one from that year that would still stand a chance today would be Smithville, MS. Even then, It’s no guarantee, as some of the damage in Cayce, KY from this event looked comparable to Smithville. What an absolute mess. Time for an EF scale overhaul.

[largetornado]

17 minutes ago, Buckeye05 said:

No NWS office is going to question Tim Marshall. Rating is pretty much locked in now.

Tim mentioned vehicles on his Facebook. That’s a joke. The average new vehicle is heavier and more aerodynamic than in the past. This is a poor rating

[Buckeye05]

12 minutes ago, largetornado said:

Tim mentioned vehicles on his Facebook. That’s a joke. The average new vehicle is heavier and more aerodynamic than in the past. This is a poor rating

I saw that too and it definitely irked me a bit. Plus, it’s not even true. This tornado threw multi-ton objects like toys, most notable coal hopper train cars. You can’t just look at one little spot and say, “Meh, the vehicles didn’t travel far enough. Unimpressive. Moving along.” 
 

This highlights another issue, which is the double standard of how contextual evidence is factored in. Damage surveyors just loooooove to nit-pick and downgrade on the basis of context, but hardly ever use it to upgrade. I think that is absolutely bs, as use of context should go both ways. Survey teams will literally ignore incredible evidence due it not being an established DI, and then use that exact same non-established DI to go lower bound because it’s not moved far enough, or something like that. Why has nobody criticized this blatant inconsistency? I guarantee you that kind of thing is going on right now at several WFOs after this outbreak. 

[madwx]

[Powerball]

I guess we all have that one thing we're really passionate about...

[tim123]

If the damage i seen isn't f5 what is. I mean entire home where gone with only foundation left. What more do you need. 

[zinski1990]

45 minutes ago, andyhb said:

Well, there it is. Also if we're expected Jarrell-level damage, I doubt EF5 is really achievable.

I swear everyone forgets Jarrell was sitting on thar neighborhood for like 5 minutes. I mean it was an F5 (EF5) but still. 

[IWXwx]

1 hour ago, CryHavoc said:

Don't forget, even if it does this, the assessors will look at building construction and manage to find fault with it.  "There was a dent in the wall from 2016 which caused a structural weakness and therefore cannot be considered worthy of an EF5 rating."

This was an EF5.  Period.  Maxed out violent wedge, long-tracked tornado accounting for numerous records including G2G, a TBSS on radar, lofted debris to 35k feet, foundations swept clean, scouring, vehicles tossed massive distances, trains thrown from their tracks.

So measurements of actual wind speeds doesn't matter (el reno 2013), radar measurements doesn't matter, buildings leveled/decimated doesn't matter, foundations swept clean doesn't matter, incredible instances of one-off damage doesn't matter...

Where is the science, here?  At what point does the EF scale become entirely useless?  It's not consistent, it's not uniform, it's not predictable, and it's changing year-on-year to be more temperamental and stringent.

We may see 1-2 EF5s in a 50 year period if this is the new standard.  The Fujita Scale is one of the few things I know in all of science that favors human-eyed-interpretations of an event over ACTUAL scientific data and measurements.

There's very little science left to it.

"This was an EF5.  Period.  Maxed out violent wedge, long-tracked tornado accounting for numerous records including G2G, a TBSS on radar, lofted debris to 35k feet, foundations swept clean, scouring, vehicles tossed massive distances, trains thrown from their tracks."

This.

[DanLarsen34]

This is shocking. If Jarrell is the standard we are now using to judge EF-5 ratings, we may literally never see an EF-5 rating again. Jarrell caused arguably the most complete destruction we’ve ever seen. 

[tim123]

6 minutes ago, IWXwx said:

"This was an EF5.  Period.  Maxed out violent wedge, long-tracked tornado accounting for numerous records including G2G, a TBSS on radar, lofted debris to 35k feet, foundations swept clean, scouring, vehicles tossed massive distances, trains thrown from their tracks."

This.

Entire argument for climate change too.

[Buckeye05]

1 minute ago, DanLarsen34 said:

This is shocking. If Jarrell is the standard we are now using to judge EF-5 ratings, we may literally never see an EF-5 rating again. Jarrell caused arguably the most complete destruction we’ve ever seen. 

Bridge Creek too. The damage there was absurdly intense, but yeah, both are a ridiculously high standard. With that said, another poster pointed out that Tim Marshall seems to have only surveyed Mayfield and Dawson Springs, which were completely devastated, but are not the main areas when it comes to potential EF5 candidates. I hope he isn't basing his opinion just on those two towns, and I do hope that he does some more surveying in areas like Cayce, Bremen, Kentucky Lake, and Earlington, where the most high-end looking damage seems to have occurred.

[DanLarsen34]

Counterpoint to our discussion here that really hits at a major problem. 

[cheese007]

"Our housing is poorly built" and "The NWS has been needlessly stingy with EF5 ratings" are not mutually exclusive statements