The EF Scale or Enhanced Fujita Scale is the scale used for rating the strength of tornadoes. In recent years it seems to be becoming outdated as there has been outrage in the weather community about how the scale works.
The Enhanced Fujita Scale was created in 2007 to replace the original Fujita Scale because of the lack of damage indicators. Damage indicators are things like houses, trees, and cars that have been damaged during a tornado. The EF Scale uses 28 damage indicators to determine the strength and rating of every tornado.
Public outrage in the weather community started with the 2013 El Reno tornado. This tornado touched down in the country between El Reno and Union City in Oklahoma. The tornado ended before going into Oklahoma City where it could’ve ended hundreds of lives as it was 2.6 miles wide and had wind speeds of over 300 miles per hour. AN EF-5 tornado needs to have wind speeds of 200 or more miles per hour. When this tornado had 300 mile per hour winds people believed that it should be an EF-5 as it was over 100 miles per hour more than it needed to be. When the damage was done it was rated an EF-5 for a couple months until it got reduced to an EF-3 because it didn’t go through a city.
There have been more cases of tornadoes doing EF-5 damage but not getting the rating which has brought up the question of whether or not the EF Scale should be replaced. The EF Scale was created before we could measure the wind speed of a tornado so we needed the scale to tell how strong a tornado was to use it for data. Now that we can measure the wind speeds of all tornadoes the data from the measurements can be used instead of the rating.
People have argued that changing the scale isn’t necessary and that lives matter more but I feel like we should still replace the scale so we can use the scale for data. Since the EF Scale is getting outdated since you can easily measure wind speeds.
Do you think changing the EF Scale is necessary?
Should tornadoes be rated based on just their wind speeds?
https://kanelandkrier.com/opinion/national-weather-service-tornado-rating-system-needs-updates/
Replies
Good topic choice Zane. Your summary is well done but it was posted two days late. You also didn't reply to any student comments which is worth 30 points.
Do you think changing the EF Scale is necessary? I think that EF scale works just fine and that we don't need to change it. I feel like changing it would be a hassle because everyone would have to agree. I think that we should just keep it the same.
Do you think changing the EF Scale is necessary? I think it is a good scale and is used are the USA so it wouldm be hard to replace and imput a new better scale in it place. Should tornadoes be rated based on just their wind speeds? No i think we need to use EF scale because it has been working
Do you think changing the EF Scale is necessary? I think it is a good scale and is used are the USA so it wouldm be hard to replace and imput a new better scale in it place. Should tornadoes be rated based on just their wind speeds? No i think we need to keep using the EF scale
I think it is very important mainly for the fact that people can tell how dangerous the storms can be based off by the wind speed. I don't think they should only base it off the wind speeds but they should also be basing it off the size because the size and can also increase the damage.
I feel like the ef scale is very important the reason i think this is because I feel like it would be helful in the futer it can tell us what changes we need to make in the upcomming yraers I feel like if we changed the ef scale it would confoes pepole and i dont feel like it is nessasery.
I think the EF scale is necessary because it could be helpful in the future. It can help us so we can figure out what changes we can make. I don't think tornados should be just off of there wind speed. I think it should be rated by both wind speed and damage.
I personally don't think we need to change our EF scale because I just don't think that they are necessary because we already have a really good EF scale. But should the scale's be only mesuared by wind speed no, because I think people need to know more than just the wind speed.
I think it would be nice to update the EF scale, which is now outdated because it was created when there was less technology than there is now. I also think it's not fair that some tornadoes are not considered as damaging as they should be just because they didn't go through a city.
If we can measure wind speeds then no I'd say the EF scale isn't totally necessary. But I don't think tornados should be rated just off their wind speeds. I say this because what if there was a tornado that didn't have high wind speeds but still did a lot of damage. Then wouldn't we want to give it a higher rating?
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