Another reminder, MIMIC doesn’t update without additional polar satellite passes. With a storm that’s rapidly evolving (like this) and with the latest pass being 8 hours ago, it’s useless.
FWIW the energy from fusion due to lighting is orders of magnitude lower than that of the storm as a whole and has no effect on strengthening. It’s a symptom of strengthening and microphysics processes, not a cause.
I wonder if they can only do the lower bound of DOD10 without a review to determine the actual wind speed.
More info from a friend: EF4 and above and they typically need to call in a Special team to make the final determination. That would explain the lower bound usage and why it’s being checked again.
I’m going with not at all well built. I see strait nails on the bottom right and it looks like the whole thing is on cinder blocks not anchored to the ground in any way. I don’t see a concrete pad anywhere in the higher res image. There’s a chances they only rate it EF3 depending on the evidence on the ground.
The cars that were pushed into the basement may have been a factor in the collapse. Could be EF4 but NWS will definitely consider whether those cars contributed to the collapse.
There is research that shows it can be estimated by VROT and CC depth. My friend does research on it and posts some stuff on twitter. He will probably be posting about this tor at some point.
https://twitter.com/ou_sams
You don’t need low level lapse rates typically, but if there’s a cap storms won’t get organized if they even initiate. In this case we need them to overcome the cap that’s evident in the 18z JAN sounding.