What scale can you measure a tornadoes damage

Tornadoes: Questions and Answers. Does Warmer Weather Mean More The Four-fold Fiesta of Foul A Costly Year: The Damaging How to Measure Hurricane Strength World-Class Weather Blunders.

Ted Fujita , a University of Chicago severe storms research scientist who came up with the scale in Fujita's scale, which ranges from F0 to F5, is based upon the type and severity of damage the tornado produced. At that time, there were very few actual measurements of tornado wind speeds that he could relate to the damage, but he used them -- together with a lot of insight -- to devise approximate wind speed ranges for each damage category.

In subsequent years, structural engineers and meteorologists have examined damage from many tornadoes. They use knowledge of the wind forces needed to damage or destroy various buildings and their components to estimate the resultant wind speeds.

The engineers and scientists eventually determined that the original F-Scale wind speeds were too high for categories F3 and higher. In particular, homes are not built so strongly that mph winds are needed to destroy them. In some areas, building codes may only require that roofs withstand 70 mph winds. Once the roof is blown off, walls have less support and begin to fail. In other cases, the house frame may not be properly bolted to the foundation. The Saffir-Simpson scale can estimate potential property damage but is not used as a direct measurement for the intensity of the tropical system.

The wind speeds translate into categories 1 through 5. The takeaway from this is that although hurricanes Category 3 or higher will most likely cause more damage than a Category 1 or 2, the damage is not directly measured in the scale, just sustained wind speeds. Now you know how to classify each type of storm, tornadoes based on damage alone and hurricanes by sustained wind speeds alone. Skip to content. Getting Answers. Great Health Divide.

Taking Back Our Streets. Ida Coverage — New Orleans. Ark-La-Tex Weekend. It stayed on the ground for at least forty minutes and travelled an estimated thirteen miles. But those numbers are not much more than guesses; ultimately, the scariest thing about tornadoes is how little we know about them.

But no one knows exactly what quantity or combination of those factors results in a twister. The only way to know for sure that a given weather condition will produce a tornado is if one actually appears.