> They don't have to damage anything man made. If that were the criterion, > then the scale would be in terms of dollars or lives. Instead it is > precisely given in terms of wind speed. I know that the F5 tornado in > Oklahoma was within 1 mph of being an F6. If there is a good Doppler radar > reading of wind speeds, then that is also acceptable to determine the Fijuta > number. > > I realize that using Doppler radar is fairly recent and that the origonal > scale was based on damage. But, the goal of Fijuta was to measure intensity > given data that would be available at the time. It is more likely for an > intense tornado that goes through a big city to be accurately measured > because better data are available. If there was a way to obtain good data > elsewhere, then that would suffice. > > Dan M.
I'm sorry I cannot explain it better, but I know that it is based on damage ithat the wind could cause. I quoted "This spectacular funnel was probably capable of F4 damage, had it passed through a town. It produced only telephone pole and tree damage, and thus could be rated no higher than F2 damage." I've heard this hundreds of times, it is based on damage, not wind speed. Wait I will recant, but still stand by what I mean. It relates the damage to the possible wind speed. But the scenarios I stated have happened. They cannot measure wind speed from debris from a corn field. Kevin T. Too tired to fight
