P8.28 Possible Impacts of the Enhanced Fujita Scale on United States Tornado Data

The National Weather Service (NWS), with occasional augmentation by private assessors and universities, often uses damage surveys to determine path characteristics of wind events in general and tornadoes in particular. The results flow into a wide variety of utilizations, primarily involving: • Climatological recordkeeping, including the county-segmented Storm Data listing and its whole-tornado “ONETOR” counterpart at the Storm Prediction Center (SPC), as described in Schaefer and Edwards (1999), • Applied research on severe storms, including case studies and forensic meteorology, • Preparedness and hazard-mitigation activities involving the NWS, risk-reduction companies in the private sector, and all manner of public-sector emergency management agencies, and, • Verification of NWS watches and warnings.