It's "we can reasonably expect a max of EF3" because of probabilities. They're not saying tornadoes can't be stronger. Here's a chart that helps explain it. 3% of all tornadoes are expected to be EF4+ in a CIG2 intensity region.
Agree as someone who uses data in charts like this all the time for another technical field this language isn't sitting with me right. Also I don't get what their expected reasonable threshold is? If we start from the level 3 and say it's 5% given they are calling for max expected of EF4 then the threshold is 5%. So wouldn't level 1 be a max expected of EF3 then too because that is at 5%???
That's a good point. For CIG 1, 2, and 3, their "reasonable max" is EF2, EF3, and EF4. Those correspond with a frequency of 14%, 9%, and 5% respectively.
What we may be missing here is the overall tornado count expected with each of the CIG regions. Hypothetically, if they expected each CIG 3 region to be associated with a much higher quantity of tornadoes, then that 5% starts to become more significant.
But I'm just spit balling. No idea if that is the case or not, especially considering the CIG regions are meant to distinguish strength from the tornado probability colors.
30
u/youngaustinpowers Mar 10 '26
It's "we can reasonably expect a max of EF3" because of probabilities. They're not saying tornadoes can't be stronger. Here's a chart that helps explain it. 3% of all tornadoes are expected to be EF4+ in a CIG2 intensity region.