Since February 2007, the National Weather Service has used the Enhanced Fujita Scale to measure the intensity of tornadoes. After the tornado strikes, meteorologists survey the damage it caused and assign a "rating" based on estimated wind speeds corresponding with the damage.
The backdrop: The EF scale is an updated version of the Fujita Scale, which was first introduced in 1971. The enhanced scale takes into consideration how winds affect certain types of structures in the tornado's path. It looks at how those structures are designed and how the design might impact the destruction they face.
Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin is a private space company hoping to send paying customers to space in the very near future. Bezos has often stated the company's goal is to help bring about a future in which millions are living and working in space.
Hurricanes are classified using the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale — a 1 to 5 rating that's based on maximum sustained wind speed, according to the National Hurricane Center.
Background: The scale also assesses potential property damage from strong winds, with "Category 3" hurricanes and higher considered to be "major" hurricanes. The scale was created by Herbert Saffir and Robert Simpson in 1971 and introduced to the public in 1973. It was updated in 2010 to solely reflect wind speed and not storm surge or other factors.
Depending where you live in the U.S., you might experience severe thunderstorms, flooding rains, sizzling heat, or unseasonable cold and snow during the next five days as an unusually divisive weather pattern develops across the Lower 48.
Why it matters: There is the potential for multiple rounds of severe thunderstorms in the nation's midsection, beginning on Friday, and continuing this weekend into next week. Because soils are so saturated in the central states, flooding will be a major concern with this weather pattern, which will feature a collision between late winter-like cold in the Rockies and Mountain West and sizzling mid-summer weather in the Southeast.
With a multiday severe weather outbreak poised to strike the central U.S., an armada of weather researchers is heading into the Plains. Their mission: to solve some of the elusive mysteries of tornado formation.
Why it matters: Scientists know what to look for on Doppler radar imagery to detect tornadoes, and the National Weather Service warns people with an average lead time of about 15 minutes. However, meteorologists have not overcome the hurdle of determining why one storm produces a tornado while another identical-looking storm does not, which is needed to improve the false alarm rate.
Newly analyzed results from NASA’s New Horizons flyby of Ultima Thule reveal clues about the evolution of our solar system, according to a new study published in the journal Science.
Why it matters: New Horizons found that Ultima Thule appears to be leftover debris from the early days of the solar system and has remained largely untouched by the heat of the sun since it formed 4.5 billion years ago. This means that any data gathered could help researchers piece together the ancient history of our solar system.
While scientists prowl the Plains in search of monster storms, others are looking at broader-scale trends that show tantalizing clues about how Tornado Alley may be shifting both geographically and temporally as the climate changes.
Why it matters: The U.S. has the greatest number of tornadoes of any nation on Earth, and where they occur affects emergency management preparations, insurance markets and individual decisions on whether to build a storm shelter. If, as global warming continues, Tornado Alley migrates, or outbreaks become more massive, this would shift the risk distribution.
