seeing some of the latest pictures, this may be an F2. That isn’t anything to sneeze at. However, I must say.....we should surely be hearing more reports of injuries at this point if this was that severe. If not, it is a miracle.
That said, the Enhanced Fujita Scale does not have anything to do with deaths or injuries. There are times when extremely strong tornadoes have had few serious injuries.
We really won’t know how strong this thing was until we can see it in daylight I guess, which will provide a better estimate of wind speed than eyeballing night photographs on the Internet.
live loca; fire chief..”extensive damage in other areas of the city(besides downtown) too
I agree with you it was a F2 at the most.
It almost appears that this F1 or F2 (small tight funnel) was on the ground and traveling up the middle of the street for a very brief period of time in front of the CNN building. It went back up as it traveled away from the CNN building and it may have dropped down again briefly elsewhere.
You and I have seen enough F3 and F4+ damage before (since we are from the midwest) and this is not even F3 damage.