If it’s spring in the social media era, it’s wedge season. What is a wedge, you ask? Well, pretty much any tornado these days.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
There are two problems with this. The first is a vast majority of tornadoes are not wedges, especially in the way wedges are thought of — a mile-wide, wrath of god from the clouds. And also, more importantly, there are many non-wedge tornadoes that have been both beastly and deadly. The Enhanced Fujita scale, after all, is based on the actual damage done — not the size or estimated wind speeds of the tornado itself.
Just to name a few well-known examples of non-wedge tornadoes that were very strong (F2 or higher) and incredibly destructive, there’s Elie 2007 (F5); Pampa 1995 (F4); Andover 1991 (F5); and Fargo 1957 (F5). I could go on, but you get the point.
Returning back to the definition of a wedge, let’s first acknowledge that it’s a term made up by storm chasers. Here’s what the experts at the Storm Prediction Center have to say about it:
There is no scientific meaning to it; since many factors (actual tornado size, cloud base height, moisture content of the air, intervening terrain, soil and dust lofting) can regulate a tornado’s apparent width.
They even have a picture of a wedge for comparison if it helps.
Given widely varied conditions during tornado various events, as alluded to in the short excerpt above, there is no easy metric when it comes to figuring out how many wedge tornadoes there are compared to your average twister. But in today’s world it’s used to conjure up images of mile-wide monsters.
Although this is not a simple plug and play metric, because a wedge could be 40 feet wide if the cloud base is at 20 feet, let’s attempt to highlight how most tornadoes are not wedges.
Looking at the modern tornado record from 1950-2015, which catalogs 60,114 tornadoes, there are 167 that have been designated as one mile wide or greater at its maximum width. That’s 0.3 percent of tornadoes.
Being more generous, ½-mile wide tornadoes account for 1.7 percent at 1,019 total. Even down to 0.25 miles, which is 440 yards or 1,320 feet, it’s possible a fair amount are wedges. There, you’re looking at 4.8 percent of the overall total at 2,883. The lower end includes tornadoes that are not wedges, so those numbers are likely inflated.
While width is not a measure of strength (I’ve seen an EF-1 wedge tornado in Kansas), it is true that the widest tornadoes tend to be strong.
From 0.25 miles up to one mile wide, we find 69 percent of 0.25 mile wide tornadoes were rated F/EF-2 (strong) or greater and 87 percent made that classification at 1 mile wide.
Given their scare appeal, it is understandable that wedge tornadoes are feared and widely reported. Additionally, many of the great tornado disasters of our time — think Joplin (2011) or Greensburg (2007) — have been caused by wedge tornadoes. And it is true that a tornado with a larger footprint is by nature potentially more dangerous than a skinny counterpart because it can hit more stuff.
Wedge as a term is probably here to stay. But, let’s do at least keep in mind the relative rarity of a wedge when we talk tornadoes. If nothing else, we as reporters and storm chasers should broaden our vocabulary to be as descriptive as possible. There are a number of descriptive terms out there like a cone, a stovepipe (both of those were violent EF-4s), or perhaps a drill bit.
Wedges are ugly, murky, and often buried in rain anyway. Not the type of tornado anyone, even a storm chaser, wants to be staring down.