Tornado intensity and damage

Tornado intensity can be measured by in situ or remote sensing measurements, but since these are impractical for wide scale use, intensity is usually inferred via proxies, such as damage. The Fujita scale and the Enhanced Fujita scale rate tornadoes by the damage caused. The Enhanced Fujita Scale was an upgrade to the older Fujita scale, with engineered (by expert elicitation) wind estimates and better damage descriptions, but was designed so that a tornado rated on the Fujita scale would receive the same numerical rating. An EF0 tornado will probably damage trees and peel some shingles off the roof. an EF5 tornado can rip homes off their foundations and leaving them bare and can even deform large skyscrapers. The similar TORRO scale ranges from a T0 for extremely weak tornadoes to T11 for the most powerful known tornadoes. Doppler radar data, photogrammetry, and ground swirl patterns (cycloidal marks) may also be analyzed to determine intensity and award a rating.EF0 damage: The only significant damage to structures in this picture was caused by falling tree branches. Even though well-built structures are typically unscathed by EF0 tornadoes, falling trees and tree branches can injure and kill people, even inside a sturdy structure. Between 35% to 40% of all annual tornadoes in the U.S. are EF0 tornadoes.EF1 damage: Cause major damage to mobile homes and automobiles, and can cause minor structural damage to well-constructed homes. This unanchored wood-frame home sustained major roof damage, and was pushed from its foundation while remaining intact. Around 35% of all annual tornadoes in the U.S. are EF1 tornadoes.EF2 damage: At this intensity, tornadoes have a more significant impact on well-built structures, removing the roofs, and collapsing some exterior walls of poorly built structures. EF2 tornadoes are capable of completely destroying mobile homes, and generating large amounts of flying debris. This frail wood-frame home sustained major structural damage, and it was moved slightly off its foundation, with its roof completely gone. Between 15% to 19% of all annual tornadoes in the U.S. are EF2 tornadoes.EF3 damage: Here, the roof and all but some inner walls of this brick home have been demolished. While taking shelter in a basement, cellar, or inner room improves your odds of surviving a tornado drastically, occasionally even this is not enough. EF3 and stronger tornadoes only account for about 6% of all annual tornadoes in the United States, and yet since 1980 they have accounted for more than 75% of tornado-related deaths.EF4 damage: Brick homes reduced to piles of rubble. Above-ground structures are almost completely vulnerable to EF4 tornadoes, which level well-built structures, toss heavy vehicles through the air, and uproot trees, turning them into flying missiles. Around 1.1% of annual tornadoes in the U.S. are EF4 tornadoes.EF5 damage: These tornadoes cause complete destruction, obliterating and sweeping away almost anything in their paths, including those sheltering in open basements. However, they are extremely rare (making up less than 0.1% of annual tornadoes in the U.S.), and even a tornado rated as EF5 usually only produces EF5 damage across a relatively small portion of the damage path (with F4-F0 damage zones surrounding the central EF5 core). While isolated examples exist of people surviving EF5 impacts in their homes—one survivor of the Jarrell F5 sheltered in a bathtub and was miraculously blown to safety as her house disintegrated—surviving an EF5 impact outside of a robust and properly constructed underground storm shelter is statistically unlikely. Tornado intensity can be measured by in situ or remote sensing measurements, but since these are impractical for wide scale use, intensity is usually inferred via proxies, such as damage. The Fujita scale and the Enhanced Fujita scale rate tornadoes by the damage caused. The Enhanced Fujita Scale was an upgrade to the older Fujita scale, with engineered (by expert elicitation) wind estimates and better damage descriptions, but was designed so that a tornado rated on the Fujita scale would receive the same numerical rating. An EF0 tornado will probably damage trees and peel some shingles off the roof. an EF5 tornado can rip homes off their foundations and leaving them bare and can even deform large skyscrapers. The similar TORRO scale ranges from a T0 for extremely weak tornadoes to T11 for the most powerful known tornadoes. Doppler radar data, photogrammetry, and ground swirl patterns (cycloidal marks) may also be analyzed to determine intensity and award a rating. Tornadoes vary in intensity regardless of shape, size, and location, though strong tornadoes are typically larger than weak tornadoes. The association with track length and duration also varies, although longer track (and longer lived) tornadoes tend to be stronger. In the case of violent tornadoes, only a small portion of the path area is of violent intensity; most of the higher intensity is from subvortices. In the United States, 80% of tornadoes are EF0 and EF1 (T0 through T3) tornadoes. The rate of occurrence drops off quickly with increasing strength—less than 1% are violent tornadoes (EF4, T8 or stronger). For many years, before the advent of Doppler radar, scientists had nothing more than educated guesses as to the speed of the winds in a tornado. The only evidence indicating the wind speeds found in the tornado was the damage left behind by tornadoes which struck populated areas. Some believed they reach 400 mph (640 km/h); others thought they might exceed 500 mph (800 km/h), and perhaps even be supersonic. One can still find these incorrect guesses in some old (until the 1960s) literature, such as the original Fujita Intensity Scale developed by Dr. Tetsuya Theodore 'Ted' Fujita in the early '70s. However, one can find accounts (e.g. ; be sure to scroll down) of some remarkable work done in this field by a U.S. Army soldier, Sergeant John Park Finley. In 1971, Dr. Tetsuya Theodore Fujita introduced the idea for a scale of tornado winds. With the help of colleague Allen Pearson, he created and introduced what came to be called the Fujita scale in 1973. This is what the F stands for in F1, F2, etc. The scale was based on a relationship between the Beaufort scale and the Mach number scale; the low end of F1 on his scale corresponds to the low end of B12 on the Beaufort scale, and the low end of F12 corresponds to the speed of sound at sea level, or Mach 1. In practice, tornadoes are only assigned categories F0 through F5. The TORRO scale, created by the Tornado and Storm Research Organisation (TORRO), was developed in 1974 and published a year later. The TORRO scale has 12 levels, which cover a broader range with tighter graduations. It ranges from a T0 for extremely weak tornadoes to T11 for the most powerful known tornadoes. T0-T1 roughly correspond to F0, T2-T3 to F1, and so on. While T10+ would be approximately an F5, the highest tornado rated to date on the TORRO scale was a T8. There is some debate as to the usefulness of the TORRO scale over the Fujita scale—while it may be helpful for statistical purposes to have more levels of tornado strength, often the damage caused could be created by a large range of winds, rendering it hard to narrow the tornado down to a single TORRO scale category. Research conducted in the late 1980s and 1990s suggested that, even with the implication of the Fujita scale, tornado winds were notoriously overestimated, especially in significant and violent tornadoes. Because of this, in 2006, the American Meteorological Society introduced the Enhanced Fujita scale, to help assign realistic wind speeds to tornado damage. The scientists specifically designed the scale so that a tornado assessed on the Fujita scale and the Enhanced Fujita scale would receive the same ranking. The EF-scale is more specific in detailing the degrees of damage on different types of structures for a given wind speed. While the F-scale goes from F0 to F12 in theory, the EF-scale is capped at EF5, which is defined as 'winds ≥200 mph (320 km/h)'. In the United States, the Enhanced Fujita scale went into effect on February 2, 2007 for tornado damage assessments and the Fujita scale is no longer used. The first observation which confirmed that F5 winds could occur happened on April 26, 1991. A tornado near Red Rock, Oklahoma was monitored by scientists using a portable Doppler radar, an experimental radar device that measures wind speed. Near the tornado's peak intensity, they recorded a wind speed of 115–120 m/s (260–270 mph; 410–430 km/h). Though the portable radar had uncertainty of ±5–10 m/s (11–22 mph; 18–36 km/h), this reading was probably within the F5 range, confirming that tornadoes were capable of violent winds found nowhere else on earth. Eight years later, during the 1999 Oklahoma tornado outbreak of May 3, 1999, another scientific team was monitoring an exceptionally violent tornado (one which would eventually kill 36 people in the Oklahoma City metropolitan area). At about 7:00 pm, they recorded one measurement of 301 ± 20 mph (484 ± 32 km/h), 50 mph (80 km/h) faster than the previous record. Though this reading is just short of the theoretical F6 rating, the measurement was taken more than 100 feet (30 m) in the air, where winds are typically stronger than at the surface. In rating tornadoes, only surface wind speeds, or the wind speeds indicated by the damage resulting from the tornado, are taken into account. Also, in practice, the F6 rating is not used. While scientists have long theorized that extremely low pressures might occur in the center of tornadoes, there were no measurements to confirm it. A few home barometers had survived close passes by tornadoes, recording values as low as 24 inHg (810 hPa), but these measurements were highly uncertain. However, on June 24, 2003, a group of researchers successfully dropped devices called 'turtles' into an F4 tornado near Manchester, South Dakota, one of which measured a pressure drop of more than 100 hPa (3.0 inHg) as the tornado passed directly overhead. Still, tornadoes are widely varied, so meteorologists are still conducting research to determine if these values are typical or not.