I’ve found it so weird. I adore the sight of tornadoes when not in their path due to meteorology being something I want to achieve a degree in someday (my current one being in I.T, loved weather since i was little), and it surprises me that EF5’s are so insanely uncommon, even with massive changes that have occurred in weather activity over the past decade+ due to issues referring to Climate Change.
Is there a concrete reason why it has been a decade since, or is it a more complex/deeper reason?
EDIT: turns out i dont understand years, rather nearly 9 years, not 10
In: 26
Just my two cents, but imagine a world where tornadoes of that strength were common. In that case, ones even stronger would be less and less common until eventually you get to a strength that is so uncommon that it becomes the highest rank. Then in that world you’d have someone getting on Reddit asking why the highest ranked tornado by strength is so uncommon.
Tornado ratings in part are based on damage. The majority of land is rural and thus has much fewer items and value of items to be damaged.
Source: lived in Kansas my whole life and know how much area is still cropland and pasture compared to cities.
Fun fact: Tornadoes are still rare here in kansas. People moving here think tornadoes are part of everyday life. Most Kansans have never seen a tornado.
These are some of the strongest forces nature is able to generate on this planet, requiring specific conditions and weather patterns that do not occur often. I’m not a weather expert so I can’t speak specifics unfortunately but I imagine the reason we don’t see many F5 tornados is because the conditions required for them do not surface on a frequent basis.
A few reasons.
Since the Enhanced Fujita scale came about (that’s the “E” in EF-5), ratings have been assigned by the damage a twister does, and EF-4 and EF-5 damage is nearly indistinguishable, especially if the only affected buildings were 100-year old farmhouses. This is how the infamous El Reno tornado, with measured >290 mph winds, only rated as a EF-3.
The strongest tornadoes tend to form in the least dense parts of the country. And even though a tornado’s rating is determined by the highest amount of damage it ever did, the area affected by the highest winds can be as little as 1-2% of the total area a tornado affected. You have to be extraordinarily unlucky (Joplin, MO or Moore, OK unlucky) to line up the strongest winds with a well-populated area.
**Slightly speculative**: studies show that climate change is pushing tornado alley east, into the mid-South and away from the Kansas-Oklahoma hot spot.
It is possible that the conditions needed to support the strongest tornadoes do not occur here as often. ELI15: dry line initiation of monstrous supercells just isn’t a thing in Little Rock, AR or Birmingham, AL.
I was in the 2011 Joplin tornado, if you saw the destruction and power of EF5s firsthand you’d understand right away. The Joplin tornado was actually multiple vortices that combined and quickly formed a nearly mile wide monster. My neighborhood was completely leveled, like it looked like a warzone.
>I adore the sight of tornadoes
Dude, I get that weather can be interesting, but what the fuck? Have some tact. Imagine being someone who has lost a home or a loved one to a tornado and you see some dipshit jerking themself off about how much they “adore” then.
You can be interested in extreme weather while still being respectful of the gravity of the consequences it can have.
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