What retired tornado damage scale did the Enhanced Fujita scale replace in the United States? It replaced the Fujita scale. The original Fujita, or F-scale, was the U.S. standard for rating tornado intensity from the damage a tornado produced.
Ted Fujita introduced the scale in 1971. Its categories ran from F0 to F5, with increasing estimated wind speeds and damage severity. In practice, ratings depended on surveys of buildings, trees, vehicles, and other damage indicators rather than direct measurements of the tornado’s strongest winds.
The Enhanced Fujita scale was developed between 2000 and 2004 by the Fujita Scale Enhancement Project at Texas Tech University. It retained the basic zero-to-five structure but added more detailed damage indicators, degrees of damage, and consideration of construction quality. The goal was to make ratings more consistent and improve the relationship between damage and estimated wind speeds.
The EF scale was publicly unveiled in 2004 and became operational in the United States on February 1, 2007. It is still a damage-based estimate, not a direct wind-speed gauge. The Saffir-Simpson scale, by contrast, rates hurricanes, while the Beaufort scale describes wind force more generally.