Fujita Scale Question?
Feb 07, 2010
in
Tornado Questions
I know that with the standard Fujita Scale, the strongest possible on the scale is obviously an F5. I do remember that the Fujita scale originally went all the way to F12 because back then they figured tornadoes can in fact be that strong.
In theory, what kind of damage would you think, be associated with tornadoes stronger than F5?
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3 comments
UALog on February 7, 2010 at 9:08 am
The reason why the F-6 or higher level scales were never part of the official Fujita scale was not because a tornado of that destructive power and strength could not exist, but it was because there was no way at that time to define it based on the damage left behind by a very strong tornado. In order to understand this answer and to better understand my final answer your question, let me explain this in a more detailed way. If you just want to see just the direct and final answer to your question, skip all this and read the last paragraph.
Yes, when the F-scale was first discussed, the scale was going to include scale levels higher than F-5. However, there were two major problems. 1. How do we measure something stronger than a F-5?. Any instruments that would be in a path of a strong tonado would likely not survive. And what are the chances of having a strong tornado moving over any instrument at all would be very low in the odds.
Given the very low odds of a F-5 or stronger tonado moving over a high wind measuring equiptment and even lower odds that one of these instrument would survive a direct hit would almost zero chance. So, at that time, the best way to "measure" how strong a tornado was would be to look along the path of the tornado and see what kind of damage it produced. And based on the speed of the high end F-5 tornado, it was determined that anything stronger than a F-5 tonado would likely caused no significant additional damge. In other words, the damage from an F-5 would be nearly so complete and would leave so very little intact (that there would not be enough clues from the left over in teh debris field) for the storm survey team to say with any confidence that there was something stronger. So the F-5 was defined as the highest strength at that time that we can "measured" based on the destruction left behind from the storm.
With the Doppler radar of modern times, there were talk that we may have finally found something that could someday measure a storm strength that we thought we would never be able to measure by damage alone. However, we would have to change the definition of the scale because the old scale was always based on the damge done by a storm and not by the estimated wind speed from a Doppler radar or any other wind speed measuring instrument.
Another problem was because with the old definition based on damage, we can always estimate what the F 0-5 scale of old pre-Fujita scale tornadoes based on written or some kind of recorded history of the damage done. We can never do that if we change the definition of the F-scale to a Doppler based or any other modern way of strength measuring tonado devices.
So to avoid this problem and many other potential problems, I think they did the right thing by keeping the new EF scale capped at EF-5 and to make the upper wind speed of the EF-5 now unlimited. This is to end the any future debate of ever having an old damaged based system challenged by some new technology. And this new technology, we can not use to go back to reclassified old storms again.
Just imagine the can of worms this could open up. Some community would claim to have the first F-6 tornado while some onq else would claim that if we had a Dopper back in 1798, we may of had our first F-6 or higher in our community.
So, to finally answer your question (based on the old wind damage definition of the Fujita scale), the amount of damage between an F-5 and something higher would be little difference because the F-5 destruction would leave little else for anything stronger to damage and be "measured".
jumper.pony on February 7, 2010 at 9:08 am
An F5 tornado is described as the following:
winds of 418-509km/h- homes destroyed or carried away which is very rare.
I don’t think a tornado can get much stronger..
Hope i helped!
Marc Angel on February 7, 2010 at 9:08 am
Worse than devastating – strong enough to topple skyscrapers and rip through shallow bombshelters – hurling giant bulldozers close to half a mile in the air.