Enhanced Fujita scale (2029 Revision)

Enhanced Fujita Scale

EFU	Unknown	No surveyable damage
EF0	65–85 mph	Light damage
EF1	86–110 mph	Moderate damage
EF2	111–135 mph	Considerable damage
EF3	136–165 mph	Severe damage
EF4	166–200 mph	Devastating damage
EF5	>200 mph	Incredible damage

The National Weather Service’s arrow showing the EF scale. This includes a description word for each level of the scale.

The Enhanced Fujita scale (abbreviated as EF-Scale) rates tornado intensity based on the severity of the damage they cause. It is used in some countries, including the United States, Canada, France, and Japan.

The scale has the same basic design as the original Fujita scale—six intensity categories from zero to five, representing increasing degrees of damage. It was revised to reflect better examinations of tornado damage surveys, in order to align wind speeds more closely with associated storm damage. Better standardizing and elucidating what was previously subjective and ambiguous, it also adds more types of structures and vegetation, expands degrees of damage, and better accounts for variables such as differences in construction quality. An "EF-Unknown" (EFU) category was later added for tornadoes that cannot be rated due to a lack of damage evidence.

As with the Fujita scale, the Enhanced Fujita scale remains a damage scale and only a proxy for actual wind speeds. While the wind speeds associated with the damage listed have not undergone empirical analysis (such as detailed physical or any numerical modeling) owing to excessive cost, the wind speeds were obtained through a process of expert elicitation based on various engineering studies since the 1970s as well as from the field experience of meteorologists and engineers. In addition to damage to structures and vegetation, radar data, photogrammetry, and cycloidal marks (ground swirl patterns) may be utilized when available.

History

The Enhanced Fujita scale replaced the decommissioned Fujita scale that was introduced in 1971 by Ted Fujita. Operational use began in the United States on February 1, 2007, followed by Canada on April 1, 2013. It has also been in use in France since 2008, albeit modified slightly by using damage indicators that take into account French construction standards, native vegetation, and the use of metric units. Similarly, the Japanese implementation of the scale is also modified along similar lines. The scale is also used unofficially in other countries, such as China.

The newer scale was publicly unveiled by the National Weather Service at a conference of the American Meteorological Society in Atlanta on February 2, 2006. It was developed from 2000 to 2004 by the Fujita Scale Enhancement Project of the Wind Science and Engineering Research Center at Texas Tech University, which brought together dozens of expert meteorologists and civil engineers in addition to its own resources.

The scale was used for the first time in the United States a year after its public announcement when parts of central Florida were struck by multiple tornadoes, the strongest of which were rated at EF3 on the new scale. It was used for the first time in Canada shortly after its implementation there when a tornado developed near the town of Shelburne, Ontario, on April 18, 2013, causing up to EF1 damage.

In November 2022, a research paper was published that revealed a more standardized EF-scale was in the works. This newer scale is expected to combine and create damage indicators, and introduce new methods of estimating windspeeds. Some of these newer methods include mobile doppler radar and forensic engineering.

In 2024, Anthony W. Lyza, Matthew D. Flournoy, and A. Addison Alford, researchers with the National Severe Storms Laboratory, Storm Prediction Center, Cooperative Institute for Severe and High-Impact Weather Research and Operations, and the University of Oklahoma's School of Meteorology, published a paper stating, ">20% of supercell tornadoes may be capable of producing EF4–EF5 damage".

In 2100, the Enhanced Fujita scale was decommissioned on January 1st, 2100 in favor of the Ultimate Fujita scale.

Parameters

The seven categories for the EF scale are listed below, in order of increasing intensity. Although the wind speeds and photographic damage examples have been updated, the damage descriptions given are based on those from the Fujita scale, which are more or less still accurate. However, for the actual EF scale in practice, damage indicators (the type of structure which has been damaged) are predominantly used in determining the tornado intensity.

Scale	Wind speed estimate		Frequency	Potential Damage	Example of damage
	mph	km/h
EFU	N/A	N/A	3.11%	No surveyable damage. Intensity cannot be determined due to a lack of information. This rating applies to tornadoes that traverse areas with no damage indicators, cause damage in an area that cannot be accessed by a survey, or cause damage that cannot be differentiated from that of another tornado.	N/A
EF0	65–85	105–137	52.82%	Minor damage. Small trees are blown down and bushes are uprooted. Shingles are ripped off roofs, windows in cars and buildings are blown out, medium to large branches snapped off of large trees, sheds are majorly damaged, and loose small items are tossed and blown away (i.e. lawn chairs, plastic tables, sports equipment, mattresses). Barns are damaged. Paper and leaves lifted off the ground.
EF1	86–110	138–177	32.98%	Moderate damage Roofs stripped from shingles or planting. Small areas of roof may be blown off house. Doors and garage doors blown in, siding ripped off houses, mobile homes flipped or rolled onto their sides, small trees uprooted, large trees snapped or blown down, telephone poles snapped, outhouses and sheds blown away. Cars occasionally flipped or blown over, and moderate roof and side damage to barns. Corn stalks slightly bent and stripped of leaves.
EF2	111–135	178–217	8.41%	Considerable damage Whole roofs ripped off frame houses, interiors of frame homes damaged, and small, medium, and large trees uprooted. Weak structures such as barns, mobile homes, sheds, and outhouses are completely destroyed. Cars are lifted off the ground.
EF3	136–165	218–266	2.18%	Severe damage Roofs and numerous outside walls blown away from frame homes, all trees in its path uprooted or lofted. Two-story homes have their second floor destroyed, high-rises have many windows blown out, radio towers blown down, metal buildings (e.g. factories, power plants, construction sites, etc.) are heavily damaged, sometimes completely destroyed. Large vehicles such as tractors, buses, and forklifts are blown from their original positions. Trains can be flipped or rolled onto their sides. Severe damage to large structures such as shopping malls.
EF4	166–200	267–322	0.45%	Devastating damage Trees are partially debarked, cars are mangled and thrown in the air, frame homes are completely destroyed and some may be swept away, moving trains blown off railroad tracks, and barns are leveled. High-rises are significantly damaged.
EF5	201–319	323–513	0.05%	Incredible damage Nearly all buildings aside from heavily built structures are destroyed. Cars are mangled and thrown hundreds, possibly thousands of yards away. Frame homes, brick homes, and small businesses, are swept away, trees debarked, corn stalks flattened or ripped out of the ground, skyscrapers sustain major structural damage, grass ripped out of the ground. Wood and any small solid material become dangerous projectiles.
EF6	320+	514+	0.01%	Cataclysmic damage Structures are not only swept away but experience total structural and foundational failure. Well-built homes are obliterated, and their concrete foundations may be cracked apart, lifted, rotated, or broken into sections. Vehicles are mangled, torn apart, or thrown extreme distances. Trees are shredded, uprooted, or fully removed with root systems destroyed. The ground itself may be severely scoured, with deep trenches exceeding 5 feet carved into soil or pavement. Even heavily engineered buildings can suffer major to near-total collapse under the extreme winds and high-energy debris impacts.

Damage indicators and degrees of damage

The EF scale currently has 29 damage indicators (DI), or types of structures and vegetation, each with a varying number of degrees of damage (DoD). Each structure has a maximum DoD value, which is given by total destruction. Lesser damage to a structure will yield lower DoD values. The links in the right column of the following table describe the degrees of damage for the damage indicators listed in each row.

DI No.	Damage indicator (DI)	Maximum degrees of damage
1	Small barns or farm outbuildings (SBO)	8
2	One- or two-family residences (FR12)	10
3	Manufactured home – single wide (MHSW)	9
4	Manufactured home – double wide (MHDW)	12
5	Apartments, condos, townhouses [three stories or less] (ACT)	6
6	Motel (M)	10
7	Masonry apartment or motel building (MAM)	7
8	Small retail building [fast-food restaurants] (SRB)	8
9	Small professional building [doctor's office, branch banks] (SPB)	9
10	Strip mall (SM)	9
11	Large shopping mall (LSM)	9
12	Large, isolated retail building [Wal-Mart, Home Depot] (LIRB)	7
13	Automobile showroom (ASR)	8
14	Automobile service building (ASB)	8
15	Elementary school [single-story; interior or exterior hallways] (ES)	10
16	Junior or senior high school (JHSH)	11
17	Low-rise building [1–4 stories] (LRB)	7
18	Mid-rise building [5–20 stories] (MRB)	10
19	High-rise building [more than 20 stories] (HRB)	10
20	Institutional building [hospital, government or university building] (IB)	11
21	Metal building system (MBS)	8
22	Service station canopy (SSC)	6
23	Warehouse building [tilt-up walls or heavy-timber construction] (WHB)	7
24	Electrical transmission lines (ETL)	6
25	Free-standing towers (FST)	3
26	Free-standing light poles, luminary poles, flag poles (FSP)	3
27	Trees: hardwood (TH)	5
28	Trees: softwood (TS)	5
29	Ground Scouring (GS)	4

Differences from the Fujita scale

The new scale takes into account the quality of construction and standardizes different kinds of structures. The wind speeds on the original scale were deemed by meteorologists and engineers as being too high, and engineering studies indicated that slower winds than initially estimated cause the respective degrees of damage. The old scale lists an F5 tornado as wind speeds of 261–318 mph (420–512 km/h), while the new scale lists an EF5 as a tornado with winds above 200 mph (322 km/h), found to be sufficient to cause the damage previously ascribed to the F5 range of wind speeds. None of the tornadoes in the United States recorded before February 1, 2007, will be re-categorized.

Essentially, there is no functional difference in how tornadoes are rated. The old ratings and new ratings are smoothly connected with a linear formula. The only differences are adjusted wind speeds, measurements of which were not used in previous ratings, and refined damage descriptions; this is to standardize ratings and to make it easier to rate tornadoes which strike few structures. Twenty-eight Damage Indicators (DI), with descriptions such as "double-wide mobile home" or "strip mall", are used along with Degrees of Damage (DoD) to determine wind estimates. Different structures, depending on their building materials and ability to survive high winds, have their own DIs and DoDs. Damage descriptors and wind speeds will also be readily updated as new information is learned.

Since the new system still uses actual tornado damage and similar degrees of damage for each category to estimate the storm's wind speed, the National Weather Service states that the new scale will likely not lead to an increase in the number of tornadoes classified as EF5. Additionally, the upper bound of the wind speed range for EF5 is open—in other words, there is no maximum wind speed designated.

Modification

In 2025, the Enhanced Fujita scale received a couple updates for it's ratings. Being criticized multiple times for the terrible tornado ratings of the 2015 Rochelle tornado, the 2024 Greenfield tornado, and many others, Meteorologists from multiple companies including the NWS decided to update the scale to also include wind speed along with damage indicators, in order to better describe tornadoes. They also introduced a new damage indicator type, which will be for ground scouring.

In the 2024 Greenfield tornado, Mechanical engineer Ethan Moriarty stated that winds of at least 247 miles per hour (398 km/h) was needed to rip the concrete stop blocks out of the ground if they were cracked prior to being pulled up, or 283 miles per hour (455 km/h) if they were uncracked prior to being ripped out of the ground. With evidence of this being shown on five different occasions, the EF5 rating was considered, but ultimately was withheld due to the tornadoes apparent weakening before hitting the town itself. However, Moriarty stated that he believed the tornado was "without question a tornado capable of EF5 damage", while stating that, had the tornado been rated on a scale other than the Enhanced Fujita scale, it may have received a higher rating.

With all of this considered, many Meteorologists decided to come together to make a change happen so that tornadoes will be recognized not only for the damage they cause, but also the wind speeds and wind gusts they have.

Rating classifications

Tornado rating classifications

EF0	EF1	EF2	EF3	EF4	EF5	EF6
Weak	Moderate	Strong	Severe	Extreme	Catastrophic	Cataclysmic
Weak		Strong		Violent
		Significant
			Intense