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WHAT A TORNADO BREAKS

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WHAT A TORNADO BREAKS

twenty-eight damage indicators — and the wind at which each one gives way

Built as a memo rather than a table: the thing worth hanging it up for reads across the room, with the full reference in smaller type below it.

Three sizes in one archive — from a sheet on the fridge to a poster on the wall.

Standard$1.50

Payment and email are handled by Paddle. The download link arrives by email — no account, no password.

Formats
A4 · A3 · A2
What you get
Print-ready PDFs, one per size, with every letterform converted to outlines — nothing to install, nothing to shift.
Subject
science · comparison · everyone · study

The indicator on the left, then the wind of the first visible damage and the wind that destroys it. The comb is every degree in between. The axis is in mph, as in the source: 228 mph ≈ 367 km/h.

EVERYTHING STARTS TO BREAK AT THE SAME WIND

Across all 28 indicators the first visible damage falls between 60 and 92 mph — a spread of 32 mph. Destroying them takes anything from 112 to 228, a spread of 116 — four times as wide. It is not the thresholds that differ but the reserve behind them.

Seven indicators out of 28 begin to show damage below the scale itself: EF0 starts at 65 mph, and small limbs break at 60. The faintest trace a tornado leaves is below what the scale can measure — it begins higher up.

The highest expected wind in all 222 degrees is 228 mph, and it is the permanent structural deformation of a building over twenty storeys; the experts left it somewhere between 190 and 290. A whisker a hundred miles wide is not carelessness but what the scale is: the SPC calls it “a set of wind estimates, not measurements”.

On the sheet

  • The indicator on the left, then the wind of the first visible damage and the wind that destroys it. The comb is every degree in between. The axis is in mph, as in the source: 228 mph ≈ 367 km/h.
  • Colour carries meaning, but meaning never rests on colour alone — the sheet reads in black and white.
  • Nothing about how it was made: the sheet carries only what the reader needs.

Printing

  • Three sizes in the archive: A4 — 210×297 mm, A3 — 297×420 mm, A2 — 420×594 mm.
  • All text is converted to outlines. No fonts to install, and nothing shifts on another machine.
  • White background and sparing fills — it prints on a home printer without draining the cartridge.
  • Margins of at least 10 mm: a home printer cannot print to the edge.
  • No stroke thinner than 0.3 mm, so nothing disappears in print.

Why the numbers can be trusted. Every countable number here is computed from data rather than typed in, and the sheet must pass 6 independent checks before it is allowed to build — how many items there are, the order they come in, and the claim in the highlighted box itself. If one fails, there is no file.

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