Could an F12 tornado possibly wipe out a whole city? Example: Las Vegas, Nevada?

Answer 1

If there were, not that there could be, It could wipe out a whole city depending on the size and the duration of the tornado.
Do not listen to by pegminer the person who answere this question because that person made no sense. The fujita scale is not dtermined by size but by wind speeds and damage.

Answer 2

There are no F12 tornadoes, but it doesn't really matter because an F5 tornado could destroy an entire city, it it were large enough. The F-number of a tornado is independent of size, so you could have an F0 the size of Las Vegas or an F5 the size of a dust devil. An F4 tornado essentially destroyed the entire city of Hallam, Nebraska, but it was only 2.5 miles wide. Since that is the largest tornado ever recorded, it's not likely that you'd get one large enough to destroy Las Vegas. However, you might think instead of the eyewall of a Category 5 hurricane, that MAY be large enough to destroy an entire city, and perhaps as large as a medium-sized city. Just look at the destruction caused by Hurricane Andrew.

Note added later about tornadoes in Las Vegas: in case people don't realize it, tornadoes do occur in Nevada, and virtually every other state too. If you check the tornado project online ( http://www.tornadoproject.com/alltorns/nvtorn.htm ) you can see a record of tornadoes in Nevada, 10 of which were in Clark County, home of Las Vegas. They were all F0 and F1, no "F12" 's, lol.

Answer 3

There is no F12 for the reasons that the scale does not go that high and the scale is now called EF for Enhances Fujita. The biggest so far was the EF5 that his Greensburg Kansas last spring. I was 20 miles north of there storm chasing but my roommate was the one with the only video of that tornado. That tornado was enough to wipe out nearly that whole town so I do not think you need an EF12 to wipe out an entire city. The other non reality is there will not be a tornado hitting the city of Las Vegas in your lifetime.

Answer 4

First of all, such strong wind speeds have never been recorded on Earth. An F12 tornado would have winds of around 740 mph which is equivalent to Mach 1; the speed of sound. A tornado of that magnitude can never happen on Earth.
Besides, the Fujita Scale (now the Enhanced Fujita Scale) only goes up to EF-5.
An EF-5 tornado can effectively destroy a portion of any city such as Las Vegas. EF-5 tornadoes are very rare, and EF-12 (F 12) tornadoes are just fantasy.

Answer 5

Since the highest known level (F5) includes winds of 300 mph, an F12 would involve winds of about 500 mph, which have never been observed. Since the determinant of damage includes the width of the tornado and the length of its path, and these haven't been correlated with F-strength, a yes/no answer would be hard to give. Tornados on record have devasted portions of highly-inhabited parts of cities, such as St Louis (1897), Waco, TX (1953) and Worchester, MA (1954)?, so with a "little bit of [un]luck" it could well happen.
However, Las Vegas doesn't seem a likely target in terms of its past weather history.

Answer 6

The Fujita scale was devised to estimate wind speeds from the damage caused. This was because few tornadoes ever passed over an anemometer and if they did, they tended to destroy it so measuring winds in tornadoes was very difficult. It can be done today using Doppler radar but the Fujita scale is still the easiest way of estimating wind speeds.

As the scale uses damage to estimate speeds, the highest possible figure is total destruction. That's F5. You cannot get more damage than that even with higher wind speeds so F5 is as good as it gets.

Answer 7

Considering the Fujita scale only goes to an F6, and an F6 is considered "inconceivable", I think an F12 could wipe out an entire planet ;)

Answer 8

An F 12 would indeed wipe out the entire planet, you are talking about winds in excess of 1000 mph. Are you crazy or what.

Answer 9

You have to have perfect conditions for a tornado?
Like snow in North Dakota. Hot conditions in Texas.
The jet stream moving and swirling in between. It causes the hot air to hit the cold air and walla we have tornado's in Oklahoma. The perfect storm is when Denver is having a storm. Dakota's are having a storm and them a heat wave hits Texas. Everyone better run for cover.
the most dangerous tornados are in the winter time. About this time of year.

Answer 10

Pretty much all towns have a place to gamble (some "casinos" are just a extra room built on ) except Boulder City. No gambling there