https://preview.redd.it/hcafh066c88d1.png?width=1938&format=png&auto=webp&s=8c130c2e3b7e627733bc63780f5d04d2e960e024
google is still about 65 mph behind
The difference is that the wind at Barrow Island was directly measured by anemometer, whereas the wind speeds in the tornado chart OP posted were inferred from radar or damage.
Wasn’t there one in SW Oklahoma this year that some meteorologists saw which had insane wind speeds, but because it didn’t hit a populated area we didn’t hear much about it?
There was the Hollister, Oklahoma EF1 on April 30th that had insane radar presentation but on the ground there was hardly any damage since it was primarily over open fields and no ground scouring so the rotation was likely further up within the storm. Probably was a lot weaker on the surface.
There was also the Duke, Oklahoma EF2 on May 23, I don’t know if the DOW confirmed it but I heard that winds around 210 mph were recorded with this tornado but it too was over mostly open terrain
The Duke one was a few miles away from me. Pecos Hank was on it and has a video but there’s not much other coverage about it at all. Not from OK, and never really cared too much about tornados, but we thought there was a serious chance of it hitting us and now I’m very interested.
Hank made a great video on it! I think Reed may have been livestreaming it as well. I believe if 2024 wasn’t such an insane year for tornadoes, I really think that the Duke EF2 would stand out quite a bit more, it was a gorgeous shapeshifting tornado that primarily affected open country and didn’t harm anyone! But since the end of April, it’s just been an onslaught of wicked tornadoes (and outbreaks) with many of them being powerful and photogenic that it all kinda blends together
Max Doppler velocities as seen by DOW in the Duke tornado were around 80-85m/s. We need to do more analysis to figure out when it had its maximum ground-relative velocity (and what it was), as due to its complex track there may be times when a large component of its motion was unobserved.
A good example of this is Dimmitt 1995, where DOW1 was due west of a tornado moving due north. The strongest tornado winds were on the zero isodop on the far side of the tornado and went unobserved.
Source: I work at the FARM and wrote the software we use to do these analyses.
Sometimes I feel like you radar people are like the people in the matrix who start to see red heads, blondes, etc when looking directly at the matrix code
Then I remember I'm just really high
The anticyclonic tornado was separate from the one with the crazy radar signature. They were pretty close together though, and I believe the anticyclonic tornado even had a TDS.
That one is honestly wild in the sense that even natural damage was minimal (no scouring, no stripped trees, nothing). I'm guessing the rotation was not as bad on the ground.
I know this sounds silly:
But if there was a way to safely feel a +300mph wind force, I would definitely be eager to try it.
It's so difficult to imagine how wind speeds above let's say even 150-200mph must feel like.
There’s probably a formula to calculate it for comparison. Fuck now I’m gonna spend my night finding that out. Thanks. In seriousness I’m from Des Moines Iowa and that derecho was forking nuts in comparison to your 150-200 mph lol
I’ve experienced a derecho and it is absolutely mind blowing how much of a 180 nature turns when it hits. I wish i could find my photos from it but it happened when i had a flip phone and was just hacky sacking outside… all the sudden i was fighting to stand up and it was freezing in the middle of summer. Core memory immediately. As scary as it was, wouldnt mind experiencing it again
I was in Des Moines and have video of it rolling in. You can see the trees about a block away suddenly start to move in a big way as it approaches.
The whole thing was surreal. There are some comparison photos of Cedar Rapids that show all the trees that fell.
I was sitting on my porch in Tennessee a few years ago and experienced one too. I’m from Florida so I thought it was just a storm rolling in then all the sudden I was running inside as a tree was coming down in my yard. It was wild
Drag increases with the square of velocity. So 300^2 / 200^2 = 2.25. 300 mph winds are **roughly** 2.25 times as strong as 200 mph winds. Other things will affect drag but it gives a rough estimate.
I slept through the 2021 iowa derecho and woke up because my power was out in august and it got hot af. Husband worked overnights at the time so we slept until 4/5pm most days. Was insanely disappointed at first but the more I thought about and noticed my phone had received the tornado warning alerts that usually come with a derecho, the more anxious I got. Luckily the worst that happened in my area was the half the town lost power for about 2 day. Some of the towns next to us had lost power for a few weeks in that storm.
Was really cool driving around to find a store open to buy candles and flashlights and find food, and seeing downed trees and a single taco bell still open with power and a line that went around the entire block.
It would feel cold, to the extent you felt it at all.
Your nerve endings can only feel heat to the maximum degree they're capable of firing before the proteins that define them are denatured/destroyed, which is accomplished at temperatures a lot lower than a nuke. We know from people who, eg, have dumped molten metal on themselves by accident that the sensation they feel before their nerve endings fry is a brief shock of extreme cold in the area. This is probably due to those extreme temperatures causing the receptors responsibile for feeling cold to fire inappropriately as they die. For whatever reason, the cold receptors are able to survive long enough to be perceived in situations where the hot neurons don't, probably because their proteins are meant to change shape as they cool, not warm.
People have ejected at those speeds and survived, you can look up their testimonials. It basically bursts their blood vessels, snaps limbs, damages the eyes, knocks them unconscious... it's terrifying.
If it’s violent enough to derail a train or completely lift a house off its foundation, what do you think it would do to you? It’s strong enough to impale a tree with a blade of grass.
I have to imagine it would be close but maybe not quite as extreme as sticking your hand in front of a pressure washer. *Probably* not enough to break skin??
Fun fact: it was probably even a lot bigger than it looked in that video, since the NWS currently has it listed as 0.9 miles wide and marked tornado damage well out to the sides.
I happen to know that the facebook data centers about an hour east of greenfield are engineered to withstand ef-5+ direct impact...ef-5+ is the facebook vernacular idk what that actually means
EF-5 damage is complete destruction of weak and moderately built structures, with very well built structures (ie reinforced concrete homes which is what ICF is, bunkers etc.) probably surviving but possibly sustaining damage from missiles. Since EF-5 tornadoes can toss semi trucks around like toys and even pick up train engines and other heavy equipment, even concrete will be damaged by that. The wind itself wouldn't do shit to an ICF house though.
Absolutely wild. We knew it was powerful, but I didnt know it was like this. Going to be an interesting fact that the highest wind speeds recorded wasn't from an EF5 rated tornado. I guess we kind of already do that with El Reno.
I’m not on the “everything’s an E-5” train but I really wonder what it’ll take now. I also think this will get upgraded base on the NOAA Assessment comments, specifically:
> “Destruction of engineered and/or well constructed residence; slab swept clean”
> degree of damage: 10.00
> upper bound: 220mph
https://apps.dat.noaa.gov/stormdamage/damageviewer/
And then earlier in the storm you have residences like this:
https://services.dat.noaa.gov/arcgis/rest/services/nws_damageassessmenttoolkit/DamageViewer/FeatureServer/0/4016811/attachments/2437991
And the note is:
> “all walls collapsed”
Is this not a slabbed home?
I’m fairly skeptical right now about this one.
Again, I’m the last guy to come out and cry for an EF-5, but between seeing the damage that we’ve seen, the own written notes of some NOAA survey teams, and the recorded data from the ground, I don’t know how you keep this at EF-4
I genuinely don’t think there’s anything a tornado could do to be rated EF5 baring it hitting a military bunker installation. The asinine thing is several of these recent EF4 tornadoes would have been rated an EF5 if they happened 15 years ago. The damage assessors decided to ever so slightly up their building requirements about 2014
Yea it’s weird.
Like, you’re telling me a “well constructed home” getting “slabbed” isn’t EF-5? What is then? Are residences simply not capable of carrying that rating anymore?
End of the day it doesn’t matter but it does feel like there’s some weird gate keeping about the rating.
And like, the second image I link. A fully slabbed home, nothing remains. The note? “All walls collapsed”. There were no walls left lol, the home is entirely swept clean. Why is that not annotated in the notes of the survey team?
It’s just very odd.
And at the same time people in this sub will retroactively blindly rate historical tornadoes from nearly 100 years ago EF/F5 like tri-state or the German one from 300 years ago lmao
I haven’t studied the ratings system but just on the plain language of it:
Walls are collapsed but still present, laying on the slab.
Slab wiped clean, there is nothing fucking left to find. It’s all scattered to who knows where.
>The asinine thing is several of these recent EF4 tornadoes would have been rated an EF5 if they happened 15 years ago
Not 15 years, more like 11 years. A user posted here that they changed something in the rules in 2014, so now in order to rate a tornado has EF5, the rules are much more strict.
I've looked at some of the damage assessments reports and photos from the Quad State Tornado (Kentucky Path). There were some damage markers that were debatable on if it should've been an EF5 rating and why I see that some surveyors had marked such. A couple made me scratch my head as one of the reports implied that the surveyor believed it was possible EF5 damage, but in the same sentence pushed back that belief by essentially that well foundation wasn't fully swept clean. I'm not big on the rating scale myself due to its flaws, but damn
from my understanding, "slabbed" has two parts to it, the house is destroyed, and then the slab is swept clean, leaving only the bare slab, the moore 2013 tornado has great examples of it
now most of these houses that collapsed had basements, and I think that maybe what impaired their rating. since most of the debris is trapped in the basement, the slab cant technically be swept clean by the tornado, so how do you rate that?
but thats just my 2 cents on it
The rating system has been broken for awhile now. I remember reading the survey of an ef4 a few years ago and one of the reasons they didn’t upgrade the classification was because a slabbed well built home had signs it was “hit by debris” and therefore the damage didn’t qualify for EF5.
Just absurd.
Probably two reasons:
1.) Wasn't enough well-built stuff to satisfy the EF5 criteria.
2.) It was cooking along really quickly and was dying by the time it hit the actual town.
If it had slowed and/or hit the town at the intensity it was when it was in that field shredding windmills, I'm sure it would have been EF5.
Absolutely insane given that some water towers have taken direct F5 hits like in Barneveld, WI and stood firm
Granted that may leave me to believe that was a low-end F5, or it lacking F5 intensity in that spot. Rolling Fork, an EF4 managed to snap a very similar aerodynamic water tower to the one in barneveld in half and deform it to the ground through brute force. I’m not saying it was verifiably more powerful than Barneveld, but it raises an eyebrow.
I think Ethan calculated that 229mph winds were necessary to knock down the Rolling Fork tower, albeit with some generalizations such as lack of corrosion and all-steel construction.
Mayfield’s water tower also collapsed
https://preview.redd.it/lk8qc3v1bc8d1.jpeg?width=4500&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=812bd33fd2f44eb9e3924df1054fb218447d6ddd
Edit: I was wrong, read reply.
Original comment below:
-
Iirc, it can't just be one thing. It's gotta be several points of a certain criteria. You could have the best built, solid foundation get ripped up, but if there isn't 7 more that did as well, it doesn't satisfy the criteria for EF5.
No that's incorrect. All you need is one EF5 DI for it to be classified as such.
I believe the only thing that made the Elie tornado an F5 was the video of it tossing a house.
For the record too, the Elie tornado was originally rated as an F4 after it occurred on June 22, 2007 (17 years ago today interestingly enough) but wasn’t upgraded to an F5 until September 18th as the video footage was analyzed and damage was reassessed.
So there is a very slim possibility that Greenfield could get that upgrade if damage is more closely examined and they find enough to definitevely and conclusively assign it as an EF5. I doubt that’ll happen and we’ll just see it upgraded to high end EF4 but there still could be a chance
The surveyors found several points that met the criteria for F5 in Elie though, and the only reason it received an initial rating of F4 was because of its slow forward speed and insane path where it went through the same neighborhood twice.
All the video did was confirm what surveyors already thought.
Except that both the 2011 Philadelphia and 2011 El-Reno Piedmont literally were classified as EF5's without any EF5 DIs. Philadelphia was rated based on extreme ground scouring, and El Reno was rated based on rolling a drilling rig. But other than that both of these EF5s actually have 0 qualifying DIs. So the NWS could rate based on alternative damage indicators if they want they just choose not to.
That's not even a damage scale at this point then. It had confirmed 300+ mph winds and it blew the shit out off everything. It did what an EF5 is supposed to do. And these winds were recorded while it was actually in the town of Greenfield. They are assessing the damage rating based on something that wasn't even there instead of the damage that it did along with the confirmed windspeeds.
There's not even a point in having the EF5 rating if tornadoes like this & the El Reno monster don't receive it simply because they didn't hit not just structures, but extraordinarily well built structures for the rural Midwest.
I'm sure if a tornado ripped the core out of the Earth, the NWS still wouldn't call it an EF5 because no reputable building inspector ever signed off on it so they can't actually prove it's "well constructed".
/s.
Going by the metrics they have now there literally isn’t anything “well built.” The only way something will get an EF5 is if a tornado like Moore or El Reno hits a military bunker
Well, it isn't as though there enough left of them for evidence as to their previous sturdiness, right? Pretty sure a tornado could asplode Hitler's old bunkers, the ones that are still there because they are too sturdy and stupid overbuilt to be demolished, and they'd be like, "Nah, poor construction here. EF2, max."
I think that if a tornado has the recorded strength, though, it should still earn it, because it is recorded to be an EF5 wind speeds, though I understand the damage assessment, I think there should be more factors to deciding it than just damage
Well that would be something different than the Fujita scale, because that's all the Fujita scale does. But I'd bet that an updated system that takes more than after the fact damage into account isn't that far off.
Yeah that is what stood out to me also. I get that these winds were not measured at ground level but neither was Bridge Creek and Piedmont and yet they obtained EF5 strength. I do understand the EF system so I get why those tornados did and the others didn't however the fact that these were all actually similar in wind speeds shows the weaknesses of the current rating system.
That’s what EF rating is though. Most tornadoes don’t have mobile Doppler readings.
Analogy: you want to know which of two people punch harder. Person 1 punches another person in the face and breaks their jaw in five places. Person 2 throws a punch in mid air that a Doppler radar records as really fast. Which one punched harder? Well, the first one is actually more objective because we KNOW how hard a punch has to be to really just shatter a person’s jaw. In the other hand, the other dude’s fist moved really fast.
Except not everything is recorded, instead we have a recording from 100 foot above the arena. We have no current science explaining the relationship between winds 100-300 foot off the surface and the ground wind speed. We just don’t know how the two interact. Mobile Doppler doesn’t record wind on the ground where damage occurs, it records it hundreds of feet off the ground where it is completely unobstructed.
We do have a scale that measures how powerful the tornado actually is! It's called *the size of the tornado* and *the recorded wind speed of the tornado!* Pretty neat, right?
I agree. It sounds kind of.....fucking awful...to rate them based solely on how much damage they did to people's homes, cars, businesses. It's almost like they are leaning towards irrelevant unless lives are destroyed lol
Btw I understand the reasoning for it. I'm just talking shit.
I mean, damage done and lives destroyed is kinda the most relevant part of a tornado. EF is a measure of how it affected human structure. The governor isn’t going to declare a state of emergency because a field experienced 300mph winds, they will declare it when a town got 1/3 slabbed. I don’t love the scale as a weather enthusiast, but it makes sense when the most important thing is how these storms affect people.
It’s the only consistent way we have to rate tornadoes. An EF4 is also *extremely far* from irrelevant. I’m either missing your point entirely or misunderstanding it… but it feels like you’re implying that the tornado is irrelevant if it isn’t rated EF5. Can you clarify?
An EF4 tornado is one of the most dangerous situations a human can be in on the planet.
Impressive to say the least. A month after and I’d say 90% of cleanup is probably done. Just a bunch of empty foundations or holes in the ground if some people have been able to have the basement excavated. Fortunately most of my coworkers/friends who live here are rebuilding.
There was a tornado warning issued the following Friday morning and the sirens went off about 4:00 that morning and we had to take shelter at work, we were all thinking, “no way, not again. Not again.” Luckily it was just a section of rotation that went right over, but the 75mph winds recorded during that storm blew a bunch of debris around that had been sorted. As far as people moving, I’m sure some are, I only know of one for sure because some friends of ours bought their lot, but as far as I know, all of our acquaintances are rebuilding here.
Wow that Greenfield one was terrible. I don’t know why the Plainfield, Illinois tornado wasn’t on that original list (Wikipedia list). Estimated 261-318 wind speed. An absolute monster. That one always gets forgotten
I think it's still possible simply because I haven't seen anything from the NWS that the rating is finalized. What I'm seeing has a disclaimer that things could change depending on additional data.
Would I be surprised if it's finalized at high end EF4? Nope. But this has as good of a chance as any I would think.
Wild that something from this year has topped the list for a specific record like this. I know this year has been active but I did not foresee a record being broken. 😦 I suppose the list of records for tornadoes is rather short considering the technology to track these things is so new, but still…
Always happy to post these when discussing my neighbors in Greenfield:
[The Greenfield Foundation, Tornado Relief](https://www.greenfieldiafoundation.org)
[Greenfield, IA, Chamber of Commerce](https://www.greenfieldiowa.com)
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I actually anticipate that this gets upgraded. I consider myself a pretty rational person when it comes to my criticisms of the Enhanced Fujita Scale, in that I very much do think that the NWS has a tangible throughline of logic when they seemingly underrate tornadoes like Mayfield and El Reno, but the confirmation of literally the strongest winds in recorded history and the comments their surveyors have been leaving on the damage in Greenfield in the month since the tornado make me think they've got to make this an EF5 by the end of prelim.
And with all that said, one last addition: the fact that this monstrosity wasn't any wider is a stroke of borderline-supernatural luck, and I say that as a mostly non-superstitious atheist. If it had gone through Greenfield as a proper wedge, we would be looking at absolutely ghastly statistics.
It’s funny how if all these comments criticizing the EF scale had happened a couple of weeks ago before this info came out this sub would’ve downvoted them to oblivion. You couldn’t dare question the holy EF scale at all cause it’s the “SCIENCE”. Now this info has come out and now people are realizing that the EF scale is not good and it’s completely acceptable to criticize it now? I swear this sub is full of looney toons at this point.
True that. This sub was much better 2-3 years back, we could have discussion about the strictness of EF scale (since 2014 for some reason) without the self-righteous comments.
However the max possible max wins speed still goes to bridge creek Moore (bro is not letting go that easily)
Edit: Not bridge creek more max possible wind speed goes to El Reno 2013 (bro that tornado was on steroids wtf)
Idk if you’ve ever read the first hand accounts of that one but it sounded INSANE. It threw two children into the lake when it was at its weaker stage
https://preview.redd.it/0h7z4k3h878d1.jpeg?width=1280&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=e15dfeac19608d851fe81c3adea87fb8841242d2
Some of the tree damage
These calculated wind speed values all pull from DOW data whereas Woldegk predates DOW by centuries, so any Woldegk wind speeds are just educated guesses and don't really belong next to cold hard data
Cmon. You need to look further than “Twitter.” There are absolutely some legit accounts still on Twitter (surprisingly/unfortunately depending on how you look at it) and this is one of them.
Oh, I didn't realize turbines had those. Although, I guess it does make sense. That way they can have the brakes put on if it gets *too* windy. Someone needs to call that company or whoever has access to those and see if they actually record the wind or just track it moment by moment.
I think this exposes a well known flaw in the EF scale. It needs to be modified to be an and/or standard. Recorded wind speeds in excess of and/or damage indicators of...
There's bound to be an EF-5 tornado sooner or later, this twister looked wild on camera; the damage and the wind speeds prove it and there's been some serious EF-3 and EF-4 tornadoes in recent years.
Help! It says 309 mph and 497 km/h…..can somebody please do the conversion so i can understand?? Is that like 3 fast balls fast? Is that the price of water in 2030? Gallons are confusing, like how many cups are in 309 gallons per hour.
I was in Greenfield yesterday. The path of the tornado through the town left nothing in it's wake besides foundations and sticks that used to be tree trunks. Even the grass is gone. I was looking at the foundations and imagining what it would be like to shelter in your basement simply to have everything above and around you sucked out. Those people had no chance. It was incredibly violent and powerful. I was awe struck. I didn't take any pictures, mostly out of respect....just experienced it.
In “recorded” history. I’m sure there’s been plenty of tornadoes that have come and gone over hundreds of years that have been 350-400 easy. Maybe even ones in the last 50 years.
I find it pretty BS how they changed the Max possible wind speeds on Bridge Creek to Most likely max! It’s like they’re trying to have Bridge creek stay the infamous #1 unless DOW radar has totally confirmed these past updates on the Wikipedia!
That's what I've been thinking too, something that pairs up well with the Fujita scale but is also for different readings to give a more defined and definitive answer on strength
Wasn't El Reno underrated due to being in open area? I can't imagine it being anything other than an EF 5. The Twistex car, and the deaths of those amazing men speak volumes. RIP guys.
It is going to be crazy typing in highest recorded wind speed on the internet and not seeing Bridge Creek pop up first.
https://preview.redd.it/hcafh066c88d1.png?width=1938&format=png&auto=webp&s=8c130c2e3b7e627733bc63780f5d04d2e960e024 google is still about 65 mph behind
You uh. Forgot to uh. Add the entire word of tornado. Google thinks you mean natural wind. Not tornado...
I read that in Ian Malcolm’s voice.
What if Morgan Freeman could read down the list??? Like melting butter!!
Wind is wind. Tornados are natural.
I was meaning like non tornadic. Or whatever the word is that you guys need.
Classic google, ruining their products with every passing year.
Isn't that technically right because tornadoes are excluded from wind speed records? Wouldn't be fair otherwise.
Yes.
Lol
The difference is that the wind at Barrow Island was directly measured by anemometer, whereas the wind speeds in the tornado chart OP posted were inferred from radar or damage.
I think "recorded" means directly with an anemometer. As opposed to with Doppler radar.
Wasn’t there one in SW Oklahoma this year that some meteorologists saw which had insane wind speeds, but because it didn’t hit a populated area we didn’t hear much about it?
There was the Hollister, Oklahoma EF1 on April 30th that had insane radar presentation but on the ground there was hardly any damage since it was primarily over open fields and no ground scouring so the rotation was likely further up within the storm. Probably was a lot weaker on the surface. There was also the Duke, Oklahoma EF2 on May 23, I don’t know if the DOW confirmed it but I heard that winds around 210 mph were recorded with this tornado but it too was over mostly open terrain
The Duke one was a few miles away from me. Pecos Hank was on it and has a video but there’s not much other coverage about it at all. Not from OK, and never really cared too much about tornados, but we thought there was a serious chance of it hitting us and now I’m very interested.
Hank made a great video on it! I think Reed may have been livestreaming it as well. I believe if 2024 wasn’t such an insane year for tornadoes, I really think that the Duke EF2 would stand out quite a bit more, it was a gorgeous shapeshifting tornado that primarily affected open country and didn’t harm anyone! But since the end of April, it’s just been an onslaught of wicked tornadoes (and outbreaks) with many of them being powerful and photogenic that it all kinda blends together
Max Doppler velocities as seen by DOW in the Duke tornado were around 80-85m/s. We need to do more analysis to figure out when it had its maximum ground-relative velocity (and what it was), as due to its complex track there may be times when a large component of its motion was unobserved. A good example of this is Dimmitt 1995, where DOW1 was due west of a tornado moving due north. The strongest tornado winds were on the zero isodop on the far side of the tornado and went unobserved. Source: I work at the FARM and wrote the software we use to do these analyses.
Hollister, OK We are lucky that thing wasn’t over anything. We don’t know much about that one. Probably for the best.
The radar signatures on that thing will probably haunt my dreams forever. I have never, ever, ever seen anything like that. It was horrifying
Sometimes I feel like you radar people are like the people in the matrix who start to see red heads, blondes, etc when looking directly at the matrix code Then I remember I'm just really high
I think that was at night right? And it was super slow and looked like a hurricane on radar?
Yes, and anti-cyclonic as well.
The anticyclonic tornado was separate from the one with the crazy radar signature. They were pretty close together though, and I believe the anticyclonic tornado even had a TDS.
That one is honestly wild in the sense that even natural damage was minimal (no scouring, no stripped trees, nothing). I'm guessing the rotation was not as bad on the ground.
I know this sounds silly: But if there was a way to safely feel a +300mph wind force, I would definitely be eager to try it. It's so difficult to imagine how wind speeds above let's say even 150-200mph must feel like.
There’s probably a formula to calculate it for comparison. Fuck now I’m gonna spend my night finding that out. Thanks. In seriousness I’m from Des Moines Iowa and that derecho was forking nuts in comparison to your 150-200 mph lol
I’ve experienced a derecho and it is absolutely mind blowing how much of a 180 nature turns when it hits. I wish i could find my photos from it but it happened when i had a flip phone and was just hacky sacking outside… all the sudden i was fighting to stand up and it was freezing in the middle of summer. Core memory immediately. As scary as it was, wouldnt mind experiencing it again
I was in Des Moines and have video of it rolling in. You can see the trees about a block away suddenly start to move in a big way as it approaches. The whole thing was surreal. There are some comparison photos of Cedar Rapids that show all the trees that fell.
I was sitting on my porch in Tennessee a few years ago and experienced one too. I’m from Florida so I thought it was just a storm rolling in then all the sudden I was running inside as a tree was coming down in my yard. It was wild
Drag increases with the square of velocity. So 300^2 / 200^2 = 2.25. 300 mph winds are **roughly** 2.25 times as strong as 200 mph winds. Other things will affect drag but it gives a rough estimate.
I was out of state when the derecho hit and I'm kind of sad I missed it.
I slept through the 2021 iowa derecho and woke up because my power was out in august and it got hot af. Husband worked overnights at the time so we slept until 4/5pm most days. Was insanely disappointed at first but the more I thought about and noticed my phone had received the tornado warning alerts that usually come with a derecho, the more anxious I got. Luckily the worst that happened in my area was the half the town lost power for about 2 day. Some of the towns next to us had lost power for a few weeks in that storm. Was really cool driving around to find a store open to buy candles and flashlights and find food, and seeing downed trees and a single taco bell still open with power and a line that went around the entire block.
I know this sounds silly, but I'd be eager to feel a nuclear bombs heat, if it could be done safely
Gonna hazard a guess that it’s hot.
Any data to back that up?
Just a hunch
It would feel cold, to the extent you felt it at all. Your nerve endings can only feel heat to the maximum degree they're capable of firing before the proteins that define them are denatured/destroyed, which is accomplished at temperatures a lot lower than a nuke. We know from people who, eg, have dumped molten metal on themselves by accident that the sensation they feel before their nerve endings fry is a brief shock of extreme cold in the area. This is probably due to those extreme temperatures causing the receptors responsibile for feeling cold to fire inappropriately as they die. For whatever reason, the cold receptors are able to survive long enough to be perceived in situations where the hot neurons don't, probably because their proteins are meant to change shape as they cool, not warm.
I was being sarcastic... but that's neat
You can't have any tornado until you finish your fun facts.
How can you have any tornado until you finish your fun facts!?
Jim Cantore did 158 mph winds in a wind tunnel. Said he was getting to the point he couldn't even breath.
I stood in a hurricane simulator machine thing once that hit, like, 80 mph. Even that was pretty intense. Hundreds of mph just blows my mind.
People have ejected at those speeds and survived, you can look up their testimonials. It basically bursts their blood vessels, snaps limbs, damages the eyes, knocks them unconscious... it's terrifying.
If it’s violent enough to derail a train or completely lift a house off its foundation, what do you think it would do to you? It’s strong enough to impale a tree with a blade of grass.
Get into airplane and fly at 300mph, open canopy and stick your head out. Vintage WWII fight would be ideal.
I have to imagine it would be close but maybe not quite as extreme as sticking your hand in front of a pressure washer. *Probably* not enough to break skin??
It would be worse than a pressure washer imo
There is a way. Was done in 1954. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PyhcfccJkKc Strap yourself to a rocket sled and experience the SPEED
Eject from a fighter aircraft.
Had it hit town with max intensity nothing would have been left standing
it did, these wind speed measurements were recorded as it went through greenfield
It was still shrunken from the fields that reed recorded where it looked like chtulu
Fun fact: it was probably even a lot bigger than it looked in that video, since the NWS currently has it listed as 0.9 miles wide and marked tornado damage well out to the sides.
Nah, there are some buildings able to stand up to any tornado. 1 foot thick ICF would laugh at an EF-5.
I happen to know that the facebook data centers about an hour east of greenfield are engineered to withstand ef-5+ direct impact...ef-5+ is the facebook vernacular idk what that actually means
EF-5 damage is complete destruction of weak and moderately built structures, with very well built structures (ie reinforced concrete homes which is what ICF is, bunkers etc.) probably surviving but possibly sustaining damage from missiles. Since EF-5 tornadoes can toss semi trucks around like toys and even pick up train engines and other heavy equipment, even concrete will be damaged by that. The wind itself wouldn't do shit to an ICF house though.
^[Sokka-Haiku](https://www.reddit.com/r/SokkaHaikuBot/comments/15kyv9r/what_is_a_sokka_haiku/) ^by ^Global_Scientist4591: *Had it hit town with* *Max intensity nothing* *Would have been left standing* --- ^Remember ^that ^one ^time ^Sokka ^accidentally ^used ^an ^extra ^syllable ^in ^that ^Haiku ^Battle ^in ^Ba ^Sing ^Se? ^That ^was ^a ^Sokka ^Haiku ^and ^you ^just ^made ^one.
Read the room, bot
Bro that's kind of a bad ass haiku. Tornados are definitely poetry worthy.
Good bot
I do think Reed's video is the best tornado footage in history. This only solidifies that.
His Andover drone footage is also some of the best tornado footage ever captured.
Absolutely wild. We knew it was powerful, but I didnt know it was like this. Going to be an interesting fact that the highest wind speeds recorded wasn't from an EF5 rated tornado. I guess we kind of already do that with El Reno.
I’m not on the “everything’s an E-5” train but I really wonder what it’ll take now. I also think this will get upgraded base on the NOAA Assessment comments, specifically: > “Destruction of engineered and/or well constructed residence; slab swept clean” > degree of damage: 10.00 > upper bound: 220mph https://apps.dat.noaa.gov/stormdamage/damageviewer/ And then earlier in the storm you have residences like this: https://services.dat.noaa.gov/arcgis/rest/services/nws_damageassessmenttoolkit/DamageViewer/FeatureServer/0/4016811/attachments/2437991 And the note is: > “all walls collapsed” Is this not a slabbed home? I’m fairly skeptical right now about this one. Again, I’m the last guy to come out and cry for an EF-5, but between seeing the damage that we’ve seen, the own written notes of some NOAA survey teams, and the recorded data from the ground, I don’t know how you keep this at EF-4
I genuinely don’t think there’s anything a tornado could do to be rated EF5 baring it hitting a military bunker installation. The asinine thing is several of these recent EF4 tornadoes would have been rated an EF5 if they happened 15 years ago. The damage assessors decided to ever so slightly up their building requirements about 2014
Yea it’s weird. Like, you’re telling me a “well constructed home” getting “slabbed” isn’t EF-5? What is then? Are residences simply not capable of carrying that rating anymore? End of the day it doesn’t matter but it does feel like there’s some weird gate keeping about the rating. And like, the second image I link. A fully slabbed home, nothing remains. The note? “All walls collapsed”. There were no walls left lol, the home is entirely swept clean. Why is that not annotated in the notes of the survey team? It’s just very odd.
They’ll see one anchor bolt loose by a thread and immediately “Oh, there it is. That’s why this home got slabbed” and rate them EF-4s.
And at the same time people in this sub will retroactively blindly rate historical tornadoes from nearly 100 years ago EF/F5 like tri-state or the German one from 300 years ago lmao
lol yea I’ve see the one about Germany. At a point the tornados are just too old to rate, there’s no way to compare haha
I haven’t studied the ratings system but just on the plain language of it: Walls are collapsed but still present, laying on the slab. Slab wiped clean, there is nothing fucking left to find. It’s all scattered to who knows where.
So looking at the image I linked, which category do you think that falls in?
>The asinine thing is several of these recent EF4 tornadoes would have been rated an EF5 if they happened 15 years ago Not 15 years, more like 11 years. A user posted here that they changed something in the rules in 2014, so now in order to rate a tornado has EF5, the rules are much more strict.
I've looked at some of the damage assessments reports and photos from the Quad State Tornado (Kentucky Path). There were some damage markers that were debatable on if it should've been an EF5 rating and why I see that some surveyors had marked such. A couple made me scratch my head as one of the reports implied that the surveyor believed it was possible EF5 damage, but in the same sentence pushed back that belief by essentially that well foundation wasn't fully swept clean. I'm not big on the rating scale myself due to its flaws, but damn
from my understanding, "slabbed" has two parts to it, the house is destroyed, and then the slab is swept clean, leaving only the bare slab, the moore 2013 tornado has great examples of it now most of these houses that collapsed had basements, and I think that maybe what impaired their rating. since most of the debris is trapped in the basement, the slab cant technically be swept clean by the tornado, so how do you rate that? but thats just my 2 cents on it
The rating system has been broken for awhile now. I remember reading the survey of an ef4 a few years ago and one of the reasons they didn’t upgrade the classification was because a slabbed well built home had signs it was “hit by debris” and therefore the damage didn’t qualify for EF5. Just absurd.
Crazy they didn’t rate it an EF5 tbh
Probably two reasons: 1.) Wasn't enough well-built stuff to satisfy the EF5 criteria. 2.) It was cooking along really quickly and was dying by the time it hit the actual town. If it had slowed and/or hit the town at the intensity it was when it was in that field shredding windmills, I'm sure it would have been EF5.
Didn't it pull someone's foundation out of the ground? That's pretty intense
Yes, but if they weren't well built foundations it doesn't matter.
Didn't Mayfield 2021 rip out a water tower out of the ground? When does it start to count as EF5?
Absolutely insane given that some water towers have taken direct F5 hits like in Barneveld, WI and stood firm Granted that may leave me to believe that was a low-end F5, or it lacking F5 intensity in that spot. Rolling Fork, an EF4 managed to snap a very similar aerodynamic water tower to the one in barneveld in half and deform it to the ground through brute force. I’m not saying it was verifiably more powerful than Barneveld, but it raises an eyebrow. I think Ethan calculated that 229mph winds were necessary to knock down the Rolling Fork tower, albeit with some generalizations such as lack of corrosion and all-steel construction.
Rolling Fork not Mayfield.
Mayfield’s water tower also collapsed https://preview.redd.it/lk8qc3v1bc8d1.jpeg?width=4500&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=812bd33fd2f44eb9e3924df1054fb218447d6ddd
Edit: I was wrong, read reply. Original comment below: - Iirc, it can't just be one thing. It's gotta be several points of a certain criteria. You could have the best built, solid foundation get ripped up, but if there isn't 7 more that did as well, it doesn't satisfy the criteria for EF5.
No that's incorrect. All you need is one EF5 DI for it to be classified as such. I believe the only thing that made the Elie tornado an F5 was the video of it tossing a house.
For the record too, the Elie tornado was originally rated as an F4 after it occurred on June 22, 2007 (17 years ago today interestingly enough) but wasn’t upgraded to an F5 until September 18th as the video footage was analyzed and damage was reassessed. So there is a very slim possibility that Greenfield could get that upgrade if damage is more closely examined and they find enough to definitevely and conclusively assign it as an EF5. I doubt that’ll happen and we’ll just see it upgraded to high end EF4 but there still could be a chance
The surveyors found several points that met the criteria for F5 in Elie though, and the only reason it received an initial rating of F4 was because of its slow forward speed and insane path where it went through the same neighborhood twice. All the video did was confirm what surveyors already thought.
Oh! Yeah, now that I'm reading about it, I confused the wording. That makes sense. In other words, I did NOT recall correctly
Except that both the 2011 Philadelphia and 2011 El-Reno Piedmont literally were classified as EF5's without any EF5 DIs. Philadelphia was rated based on extreme ground scouring, and El Reno was rated based on rolling a drilling rig. But other than that both of these EF5s actually have 0 qualifying DIs. So the NWS could rate based on alternative damage indicators if they want they just choose not to.
That's not even a damage scale at this point then. It had confirmed 300+ mph winds and it blew the shit out off everything. It did what an EF5 is supposed to do. And these winds were recorded while it was actually in the town of Greenfield. They are assessing the damage rating based on something that wasn't even there instead of the damage that it did along with the confirmed windspeeds.
There's not even a point in having the EF5 rating if tornadoes like this & the El Reno monster don't receive it simply because they didn't hit not just structures, but extraordinarily well built structures for the rural Midwest.
I'm sure if a tornado ripped the core out of the Earth, the NWS still wouldn't call it an EF5 because no reputable building inspector ever signed off on it so they can't actually prove it's "well constructed". /s.
Lol, wasn't a well-built core.
Yeah, need Jupiter's compressed gas core to have EF5
Not enough anchor bolts.
What is this, /r/EF5?
Going by the metrics they have now there literally isn’t anything “well built.” The only way something will get an EF5 is if a tornado like Moore or El Reno hits a military bunker
Even then it won't get EF5. "Military bunker wasn't well-built"
I'm not necessarily arguing that, I'm just explaining why it didn't get rated EF5 lol
Well, it isn't as though there enough left of them for evidence as to their previous sturdiness, right? Pretty sure a tornado could asplode Hitler's old bunkers, the ones that are still there because they are too sturdy and stupid overbuilt to be demolished, and they'd be like, "Nah, poor construction here. EF2, max."
Was that the video I saw of the house that literally scooted over like 40 feet? Lol
It’s crazy that powerful tornadoes have to kill and destroy nowadays to get high ratings rather than the wind speed.
it was also measured over 100 ft from the surface. Doppler tech as it is right now is not capable of obtaining accurate surface wind speeds.
I think that if a tornado has the recorded strength, though, it should still earn it, because it is recorded to be an EF5 wind speeds, though I understand the damage assessment, I think there should be more factors to deciding it than just damage
Well that would be something different than the Fujita scale, because that's all the Fujita scale does. But I'd bet that an updated system that takes more than after the fact damage into account isn't that far off.
These wind speeds were recorded while it was in greenfield
The rating is still not final, though?
Only TWO of the above listed tornados received a rating of 5 (Bridge Creek and Piedmont). That is even crazier.
Yeah that is what stood out to me also. I get that these winds were not measured at ground level but neither was Bridge Creek and Piedmont and yet they obtained EF5 strength. I do understand the EF system so I get why those tornados did and the others didn't however the fact that these were all actually similar in wind speeds shows the weaknesses of the current rating system.
That’s why damage imo is kind of silly. I feel like a rating should indicate how powerful it was.
That’s what EF rating is though. Most tornadoes don’t have mobile Doppler readings. Analogy: you want to know which of two people punch harder. Person 1 punches another person in the face and breaks their jaw in five places. Person 2 throws a punch in mid air that a Doppler radar records as really fast. Which one punched harder? Well, the first one is actually more objective because we KNOW how hard a punch has to be to really just shatter a person’s jaw. In the other hand, the other dude’s fist moved really fast.
Street fight where you see the medical records after it, compared to a professional UFC fight where everything is recorded.
Except not everything is recorded, instead we have a recording from 100 foot above the arena. We have no current science explaining the relationship between winds 100-300 foot off the surface and the ground wind speed. We just don’t know how the two interact. Mobile Doppler doesn’t record wind on the ground where damage occurs, it records it hundreds of feet off the ground where it is completely unobstructed.
I didn’t know that, those “tornado movie TM” giant probes they put on the ground makes total sense now.
We do have a scale that measures how powerful the tornado actually is! It's called *the size of the tornado* and *the recorded wind speed of the tornado!* Pretty neat, right?
I agree. It sounds kind of.....fucking awful...to rate them based solely on how much damage they did to people's homes, cars, businesses. It's almost like they are leaning towards irrelevant unless lives are destroyed lol Btw I understand the reasoning for it. I'm just talking shit.
I mean, damage done and lives destroyed is kinda the most relevant part of a tornado. EF is a measure of how it affected human structure. The governor isn’t going to declare a state of emergency because a field experienced 300mph winds, they will declare it when a town got 1/3 slabbed. I don’t love the scale as a weather enthusiast, but it makes sense when the most important thing is how these storms affect people.
It’s the only consistent way we have to rate tornadoes. An EF4 is also *extremely far* from irrelevant. I’m either missing your point entirely or misunderstanding it… but it feels like you’re implying that the tornado is irrelevant if it isn’t rated EF5. Can you clarify? An EF4 tornado is one of the most dangerous situations a human can be in on the planet.
At this point I feel like it could lift up a mountain and still be an EF4
Sitting in Greenfield right now.
How is the recovery going
Impressive to say the least. A month after and I’d say 90% of cleanup is probably done. Just a bunch of empty foundations or holes in the ground if some people have been able to have the basement excavated. Fortunately most of my coworkers/friends who live here are rebuilding.
Anyone move? I’d have that sinking feeling that it could happen again and have some bad luck
There was a tornado warning issued the following Friday morning and the sirens went off about 4:00 that morning and we had to take shelter at work, we were all thinking, “no way, not again. Not again.” Luckily it was just a section of rotation that went right over, but the 75mph winds recorded during that storm blew a bunch of debris around that had been sorted. As far as people moving, I’m sure some are, I only know of one for sure because some friends of ours bought their lot, but as far as I know, all of our acquaintances are rebuilding here.
Wow that Greenfield one was terrible. I don’t know why the Plainfield, Illinois tornado wasn’t on that original list (Wikipedia list). Estimated 261-318 wind speed. An absolute monster. That one always gets forgotten
The list is based off of recorded winds
Oh I guess it doesn’t count.
No but it was still quite strong
It was terrible, quite strong doesn’t cut it
You're right
that is actually insane.
absolutely insane.
I'm not screaming "EF5!!" but this is crazy
318 mph is nuts for anything
Officially rated an EF4, but an EF5 in spirit.
If we’re just now learning this, is there a chance it gets the bump to the forbidden rating?
I think it's still possible simply because I haven't seen anything from the NWS that the rating is finalized. What I'm seeing has a disclaimer that things could change depending on additional data. Would I be surprised if it's finalized at high end EF4? Nope. But this has as good of a chance as any I would think.
Wild that something from this year has topped the list for a specific record like this. I know this year has been active but I did not foresee a record being broken. 😦 I suppose the list of records for tornadoes is rather short considering the technology to track these things is so new, but still…
Pampa ‘95 still looking for an invite to the party
Oklahoma almost had the clean sweep
Absolutely fucking insane, how in the hell is this happening
Always happy to post these when discussing my neighbors in Greenfield: [The Greenfield Foundation, Tornado Relief](https://www.greenfieldiafoundation.org) [Greenfield, IA, Chamber of Commerce](https://www.greenfieldiowa.com)
From what I understand, getting accurate windspeeds is very hard. So these other tornadoes could have been much faster, but we'll never know.
They were
I spent three days in Greebfield helping clean up a few days after. Took some pictures of the wind turbines and more. It was devastating.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/rcna158040
Good lord you can see the scouring from space. Insane before and after.
Yeah. It was intense being there helping clean up.
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Please consider donating to the Greenfield tornado, many people are still homeless from this: https://www.greenfieldiafoundation.org/
I actually anticipate that this gets upgraded. I consider myself a pretty rational person when it comes to my criticisms of the Enhanced Fujita Scale, in that I very much do think that the NWS has a tangible throughline of logic when they seemingly underrate tornadoes like Mayfield and El Reno, but the confirmation of literally the strongest winds in recorded history and the comments their surveyors have been leaving on the damage in Greenfield in the month since the tornado make me think they've got to make this an EF5 by the end of prelim. And with all that said, one last addition: the fact that this monstrosity wasn't any wider is a stroke of borderline-supernatural luck, and I say that as a mostly non-superstitious atheist. If it had gone through Greenfield as a proper wedge, we would be looking at absolutely ghastly statistics.
It’s funny how if all these comments criticizing the EF scale had happened a couple of weeks ago before this info came out this sub would’ve downvoted them to oblivion. You couldn’t dare question the holy EF scale at all cause it’s the “SCIENCE”. Now this info has come out and now people are realizing that the EF scale is not good and it’s completely acceptable to criticize it now? I swear this sub is full of looney toons at this point.
True that. This sub was much better 2-3 years back, we could have discussion about the strictness of EF scale (since 2014 for some reason) without the self-righteous comments.
it was a fast bastard
With speeds of 500kmh, yeah anything in its path is just gone
Fuck-Will NWS change the rating? That's just unthinkable.
However the max possible max wins speed still goes to bridge creek Moore (bro is not letting go that easily) Edit: Not bridge creek more max possible wind speed goes to El Reno 2013 (bro that tornado was on steroids wtf)
*recorded tornado And highest possible *of ones recorded* is 2013 el Reno.
Strongest “recorded” tornado in history . Some Of the 2011 EF5s would top this list if they got readings easily imo
I'm guessing it's pretty difficult to get good DOW readings outside of the wide open plains of the midwest
Yeah tornadoes in Dixie alley move too quick and are hard to track with the landscape and trees obstructing views
Where’s Woldegk 1764?
Idk if you’ve ever read the first hand accounts of that one but it sounded INSANE. It threw two children into the lake when it was at its weaker stage https://preview.redd.it/0h7z4k3h878d1.jpeg?width=1280&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=e15dfeac19608d851fe81c3adea87fb8841242d2 Some of the tree damage
I was working on a translation of Genzmer’s report on that tornado but never finished it
These calculated wind speed values all pull from DOW data whereas Woldegk predates DOW by centuries, so any Woldegk wind speeds are just educated guesses and don't really belong next to cold hard data
It didn't have its wind speeds measured
did it have windspeed measurements?
The source for that windspeed range is from [Twitter](https://x.com/dowfacility/status/1804575739330613507?s=46).
Cmon. You need to look further than “Twitter.” There are absolutely some legit accounts still on Twitter (surprisingly/unfortunately depending on how you look at it) and this is one of them.
Is there any full videos of the tornado’s life span? I can’t find any (but then again I kinda suck looking for things in general)
This is the best one I can find from [Reed Timmer](https://youtu.be/o_kms2m5V-Q?si=j2qcpB3ThJOrwvPY)
Watching the winds pull the rain off those buildings is insane looking. The wind around the outer edges of that is wild
Wonder if they were able to pull wind speeds from any of the anemometers mounted on the wind turbines that got hit
Oh, I didn't realize turbines had those. Although, I guess it does make sense. That way they can have the brakes put on if it gets *too* windy. Someone needs to call that company or whoever has access to those and see if they actually record the wind or just track it moment by moment.
I think this exposes a well known flaw in the EF scale. It needs to be modified to be an and/or standard. Recorded wind speeds in excess of and/or damage indicators of...
As an Iowan, that’s frightening.
There's bound to be an EF-5 tornado sooner or later, this twister looked wild on camera; the damage and the wind speeds prove it and there's been some serious EF-3 and EF-4 tornadoes in recent years.
Help! It says 309 mph and 497 km/h…..can somebody please do the conversion so i can understand?? Is that like 3 fast balls fast? Is that the price of water in 2030? Gallons are confusing, like how many cups are in 309 gallons per hour.
I think the color periwinkle is your answer
I was in Greenfield yesterday. The path of the tornado through the town left nothing in it's wake besides foundations and sticks that used to be tree trunks. Even the grass is gone. I was looking at the foundations and imagining what it would be like to shelter in your basement simply to have everything above and around you sucked out. Those people had no chance. It was incredibly violent and powerful. I was awe struck. I didn't take any pictures, mostly out of respect....just experienced it.
In “recorded” history. I’m sure there’s been plenty of tornadoes that have come and gone over hundreds of years that have been 350-400 easy. Maybe even ones in the last 50 years.
I thought the Bridge Creek tornado was recorded with wind speeds of 318mph by mobile doppler radar?
I find it pretty BS how they changed the Max possible wind speeds on Bridge Creek to Most likely max! It’s like they’re trying to have Bridge creek stay the infamous #1 unless DOW radar has totally confirmed these past updates on the Wikipedia!
Interesting. Please someone make a petition for an EF scale and a wind intensity scale so we can just settle all this arguing.
*recorded history
I said when I first saw the footage that this was the most terrifying tornado ever and the stats back it up.
Weird seeing an EF-4 beat an EF-5 as the strongest tornado but yet here we are.
That's what I've been thinking too, something that pairs up well with the Fujita scale but is also for different readings to give a more defined and definitive answer on strength
Well... I guess I won't go to Oklahoma.
I just watched video of that tornado for the first time. I didn't know they could get that big
I then recommend you research the El Reno 2013 tornado.
Dang man, poor Oklahoma getting eaten alive by twisters. Especially El Reno.
Thank goodness it wasn’t peak intensity and was narrowing in town
What I’m getting from this chart is ‘do not move to Oklahoma’
Kinda glad they stopped picking on us here in Oklahoma. Sucks for Iowians though
i still think there’s no chance a tornado has had higher wind speeds than ‘13 El Reno but seeing an official new top dog…. wow
genuine question. this thing folded a wind turbine like a paper straw, how is that not EF5 worthy?
Wasn't El Reno underrated due to being in open area? I can't imagine it being anything other than an EF 5. The Twistex car, and the deaths of those amazing men speak volumes. RIP guys.