Scott Gardener wrote:The F rating is based on wind speed, not on monitary damage, human lives, or other artificial considerations. An F3 is the same if it's pummelling through downtown Fort Worth, Texas, through wilderness in Wisconsin, or during a dust storm across Utopia Planetia on Mars.
Thankfully, F5s are rare because the amount of updraft force neccessary to generate them simply doesn't happen very much in our atmosphere.
As a side note, hurricanes (and Typhoons) are a different weather phenomenon altogether, though they can and do produce tornadoes. Having spent a summer day running from one, I've gotten to become an amateur meteorologist. Of course, now that I'm in north Texas, it's a good thing I'm familiar with tornadoes. No direct, personal experience, but my wife Cathey got to flee to a basement back in 2000 when one blew up her workplace. So, she's familiar with all kinds of wind phenomena.
Hmm...there is a system which does it on damage. Im not sure which one it is, or where I heard it, but I watched a lot of tornado and natural disaster documentaries when I was younger; I was obsessed! I don't remember things that well sometimes though.
Here's a site:
http://www.tornadoproject.com/fscale/fscale.htm...so it is wind speed and damage which classifies it, together then. Scary! Very scary stuff. Yet I'd love to see one.
I've been in a cyclone (The Australian word for hurricane/typhoon; storm system works opposite) myself. It's not common for them to produce tornadoes here. We do, however, get tornadoes, but in winter rather than summer. We have a tornado alley about 100km from where I live, an hour or so away. I was quite young when it happened so I don't remember much. We lived in a small town for a few years (When I was probably about 2-3) then moved back to the city.
We do sometimes see tornado producing clouds. I've seen mammatus clouds overhead and super cells. But generally, where I live, we just get enormous electrical storms. I am an idiot; they are some of the most dangerous storms and I sit out on the balcony and drink while it goes right overhead. We have some of the most spectacular views of cumulonimbus clouds, especially when storms start and lightning forks across the sky and within cloud masses, and over the ocean.
Aye, now that I'm in Kansas, I know a lot more about what went on - devastation knows no bounds of race, creed or citizenship.
Must be awful to see all that damage!
To think of something that big an powerful coming at you an you can't stop it..Those poor people 