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WASHINGTON — On Friday afternoon a confirmed EF-0 tornado touched down in Olney, Md. The tornado had peak winds of 80 mph and was on the ground for around 1 minute. Here's a look into the process the National Weather Service takes to determine the strength of a tornado.
After a tornado tears through a town, the National Weather Service will survey the damage. It will determine if the damage was caused by an actual tornado or something else, possibly straight-line winds or thunderstorm damage.
The surveyors will look at the pattern of the damage. If it is scattered, then it was likely tornado or thunderstorm damage. If debris has all fallen in the same direction, then it was likely straight-line wind damage.
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If the type of damage turns out to be tornadic, the next step is to determine the strength of the tornado. NWS uses the Enhanced Fujita Scale to rate a tornado between 0 and 5 depending on estimated wind speeds and damage. Below is a look at the EF Scale and the coinciding wind speeds.
To assess the damage, NWS runs through its list of 28 different Damage Indicators (DI). Each DI has different Degrees of Damage (DoD) that help pinpoint how strong the tornado was.
Lets use a school building as an example.
If the NWS was assessing the damages to a school they would first check that the building meets the following requirements.
Then the NWS will look for the following damage to the structure. It decides whether the damage falls within the upper bound (UB), lower bound (LB), or the expected (EXP) wind speeds. Those values for a school building can be seen in the following chart and graph.
Once the DoD has been determined, NWS will evaluate the possible wind speeds that could have caused that type of damage. This process is then repeated on different structures until a final rating can be reached.
Regarding the tornado in Olney, trees were used as the DI. The NWS reported that the DoD was dozens of snapped and downed trees which lead to rating the tornado as an EF-0.
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