The Hurricane Category Scale Is Broken

2021-09-24

[public] 488K views, 34.8K likes, dislikes audio only

The current hurricane category scale doesn’t accurately convey the danger of a storm, because it doesn’t account for a hurricane's most destructive factors.

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To learn more about this topic, start your googling with these keywords:

Storm surge: a sea level rise caused by strong winds pushing the water and a change in atmospheric pressure of a storm.

Hurricane: a tropical cyclone occurring in the Atlantic Ocean or northeastern Pacific Ocean

Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale: the current scale used to categorize hurricanes from 1 to 5 based on the hurricane’s maximum sustained wind speed.

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REFERENCES

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Belles, Jonathan. “Surface Pressure a Better Indicator of Hurricane Damage Potential, New Study Says | the Weather Channel - Articles from the Weather Channel | Weather.com.” The Weather Channel, 2020, https://weather.com/storms/hurricane/news/2020-01-29-hurricane-surface-pressure-damage-potential-wind.

Erdman, Jonathan. “88% of U.S. Deaths from Hurricanes, Tropical Storms Are from Water, Not Wind | the Weather Channel - Articles from the Weather Channel | Weather.com.” The Weather Channel, 2021, https://weather.com/safety/hurricane/news/hurricanes-tropical-storms-us-deaths-surge-flooding.

Gibbens, Sarah. “Hurricane Categories Don’t Tell the Whole Story.” Environment, National Geographic, 14 Sept. 2021, https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/article/hurricane-categories-do-not-tell-the-whole-story-see-what-matters.

Klotzbach, Philip J., et al. "Surface pressure a more skillful predictor of normalized hurricane damage than maximum sustained wind." Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society 101.6 (2020): E830-E846. https://journals.ametsoc.org/view/journals/bams/101/6/bamsD190062.xml

Olson, Richard S. “Add a New Hurricane Category. Cat 6 | Opinion.” Sun-Sentinel.com, South Florida Sun-Sentinel, 3 Dec. 2019, https://www.sun-sentinel.com/opinion/commentary/fl-op-com-olson-cat-six-hurricane-category-20191203-4fwaq7hjmbdkli3sg5trmfysku-story.html.

Pilkington, Stephanie F., and Hussam N. Mahmoud. "Using artificial neural networks to forecast economic impact of multi-hazard hurricane-based events." Sustainable and Resilient Infrastructure 1.1-2 (2016): 63-83. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/23789689.2016.1179529

Plumer, Brad. “Hurricane Patricia: Why a Record Storm Did Surprisingly Little Damage.” Vox, Vox, 26 Oct. 2015, https://www.vox.com/2015/10/26/9615274/hurricane-patricia-aftermath.

‌“Storm Surge Overview.” Noaa.gov, 2021, https://www.nhc.noaa.gov/surge/.