An Explanation of the Enhanced Fujita Scale

The Fujita Tornado Intensity Scale was developed in 1971 by the leading expert on severe weather in this country, the Japanese-born Tetsuya Theodore Fujita. The Fujita Scale is based on the damage that a tornado causes and isn't a flawless system. A tornado can only be assigned a rating on the Fujita Scale after it has passed and the destruction it has precipitated assessed. This differs from the rating system that measures hurricane strength, the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Scale, which can assign a storm a designation while it is actually occurring. Meteorologists have taken the Fujita Scale and readjusted it, based on the premise that Fujita overestimated the wind speeds it took to cause the damage that each category of his system describes. The Enhanced Fujita Scale will debut on February 1st, 2007, with any tornadoes previously classified under the old one retaining their designations.

Fujita was born and raised in Japan, studying the atomic bomb damage in his homeland and going to college to become an engineer. He had a brilliant mind and was able to think outside of the box as they say, and this enabled him to look at tornadoes in a light never before even considered. He was able to prove, for instance, that a single storm system could spawn several twisters, and he was able to map their separate paths of destruction after they tore through the countryside. The Fujita Scale has been globally accepted nowadays to classify the severity of a cyclone, a dependable gauge of the power of these storms.

The actual damage that a tornado inflicts needs to be inspected by weather experts in order for them to assign the event with a rating from the newly tweaked Enhanced Fujita Scale. Such things as ground swirl patterns, eyewitness testimony, reports made by the media about the twister, and examination of the damage are reviewed. The wind speeds that the Enhanced Fujita Scale gives for each level of tornado are not meant to be taken as gospel fact since the actual wind speeds are really highly educated guesses and have not been verified scientifically.