Talk:The nws mess ups/@comment-27387353-20170201205159/@comment-27387353-20170202010330

@TG - You're omitting the fact that neither the Fujita Scale nor the Enhanced Fujita Scale ever used wind speeds as the sole factor to give a rating to a tornado; particularly because the practice of observing a tornado by a DOW unit emerged only in the last 20-30 years. If wind speeds were factored into a tornado's rating, then for example, the 1991 Red Rock, Oklahoma tornado would have been rated F5 due to a DOW unit that measured a wind speed of up to 268 mph in the funnel; or the 2013 Bennington, KS tornado would have been rated EF5 as it had velocities of 247 mph, but the damage both produced were not in the E/F5 range (though Red Rock was closer to achieving this potential), much like the El Reno tornado. Also as I said, the highest Doppler velocities recorded from the El Reno tornado were more than 400ft above the ground, which clearly shows that there is a firm difference between the speeds in the air, and speeds on the ground, as the damage on the ground showed no indicators of a violent tornado, which would have been the basis of a higher rating had they been present.