Enhanced Fujita scale

The scale has the same basic design as the original Fujita scale—six intensity categories from zero to five, representing increasing degrees of 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.

While the wind speeds associated with the damage listed did and have not undergone empirical analysis (such as detailed physical or any numerical modeling) due to expensive costs, the wind speeds were obtained through a process called expert elicitation, which was based on various engineering studies since the 1970s as well as from the field experience of meteorologists and engineers.

[7][8][9][10][11] 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.

[12] In Brazil, the EF Scale is used by the Reporting Platform and Voluntary Network of Severe Storm Observers (PREVOTS) since June 2018.

[14] 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.

This newer scale is expected to combine and create damage indicators, and introduce new methods of estimating wind speeds in tornadoes.

[16] In 2024, Anthony W. Lyza, Matthew D. Flournoy, and A. Addison Alford, researchers with the National Severe Storms Laboratory, Storm Prediction Center, CIWRO, 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".

The Enhanced Fujita Scale takes into account the quality of construction and standardizes different kinds of structures.

Different structures, depending on their building materials and ability to survive high winds, have their own DIs and DoDs.