The Hurricane Category Scale Is Broken

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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[RainierKine]

Giving a power storm a low Category is going to lower the public's awareness and preparedness for it, making the death rate potentially higher as well.

[chrismorong]

"Because there is a single measurement that beats wind speed alone at predicting destruction: air pressure at the center of the storm"
Hurricane Patricia: 872 mbar (2nd lowest globally)
Hurricane Stan: 977 mbar

[Kaitos]

Some context was missing regarding Patricia: it weakened to a high-end 150mph Cat 4 hurricane before making landfall. It was still a monster but far from the historically powerful storm it was at it's peak. The damage would've been only a bit worse though as it still hit a relatively unpopulated area.

[ZeeengMicro]

The same for earthquakes.
A scale 5 earthquake with a depth of less than 10 Km can be more destructive than a scale 7 earthquake with a depth of +100 Km.
Not to mention the location of the epicenter and the potential cause of tsunami.

[andrejonathan]

While not nearly as thorough as mentioned in the video, I feel like the CDPS scale ratings (by Force Thirteen) are far better indicators of how damaging the storm would be. It factors in the storm size, rainfall potential, wind speed, and threat to land. It's not a perfect scale, but it's pretty representative.

[daveharrison]

Make safety diamonds for hurricanes. One rating for wind speed, one for pressure, one for storm surge, one for rain.

[Darknimbus]

Don’t underestimate the wind though, as wind can cause much more damage than this video suggests. On top of that, a hurricane’s wind is the root of the damage causes, including the floods and storm surges, as you partially explained why in this video.

That’s why we use the category system in the first place. The reasoning behind that is much more complex than you suggest in this video.

[stephenmontverde]

The premise of this video is that the category scale is broken because it depends on ‘wind’ alone. It’s not broken. It just is what it is. The National Hurricane Center puts out other products to convey predicted rainfall, storm surge, etc. A “combined” category is hard to create because the geography of where the storm hits, and how fast the storm is moving often contribute far more to how destructive or deadly a hurricane might be. Minimum central pressure does not solve the problem, its just combines wind field and wind speed into a single measure. A better argument would be that “category” is not the best metric to disseminate to the public, except, if you actually get hit by the eye wall, it is.

[Sweet_Squadever]

It's so informative. Specially here in the Philippines who always have Typhoons and our geographic locations doesn't help since we are near Pacific Ocean.

[MartinHoeckerMartinez]

The direction of the wind arrows in this video are incorrect. They should depict air rising at the center of the storm and circulating winds flowing inward near the surface and outward above the cloud tops (the drawings at 1:27 and 2:49 show the opposite)

[WurstRELOADED]

I don't disagree with the central message of the video but I take issue with the claim that location of impact should be taken into consideration for the scale.
As you said, the purpose of the scale is to provide an easily accessible rating of danger to citizens. The information they are interested in is not "How many people will it kill" but rather "How likely is it to kill me and what steps should I take to reduce that chance".

[iwanabana]

Please. STOP it with the "individual footprint" baloney. Tell people to go to places where they can pressurize / choose lawmakers who prioritize the environment. Switching out some plastic cutlery won't do anything.

[emmettturner]

As someone who is currently homeless after being hit directly by the strongest part of the only EF-4 tornado this year, I’d like to point out that Hurricane Katrina had significantly lower wind speeds at landfall and it covered a larger area. Obviously, they were also below sea level with an enormous storm surge but as far as downed trees and torn roofs and crushed cars at the worst hit areas go, tornados can be worse. Some of my neighbors didn’t have a single wall left standing.

[confusioned]

I'm terrified of what a category 5 factorial storm would look like

[DreckbobBratpfanne]

One thing missing is that Patricia had the fastest weakening a storm had ever gone through before landfall, she was nowhere, nowhere, close to the 215mph strength of before.

[shadowstormmc]

Seems to me that Just modifying it into a 3 part system would be best.

the storm itself having a category (1-5) based on wind speed storm size & pressure,
In conjunction with adding a category system (1-5) for storm surge.
Add an area risk rating system (low-med-high) based on things like Vulnerability to flooding And population density.

Somthing like that could cover almost all the bases nicely And provide people with a much better idea of what they're going to be dealing with.

[LeScratch]

There are better measures to scale a storm's destructive potential by, but even for "advanced" agencies like the NHC those measures are still mostly experimental and an added-on forecast product due to the high uncertainty. Wind speed is, unfortunately, the best method we currently have with any degree of reliability to measure a storm's power by, that the general public will also kind-of understand - your average person will not understand how air pressure relates to wind speed, storm size, and storm surge. Forecast agencies have to go with reliability first because it's their responsibility to inform and warn the public, so until other methods catch up we will be dependent on this type of scale. Other agencies worldwide use their own variants of the SSHWS pertinent to their own areas of responsibility for the same reason, like the cyclone intensity scales in the Indian Ocean and Southern Hemisphere or the typhoon intensity scales in the Western Pacific. When we have enough data with other tools and methods to reliably forecast the impacts of storm surge and potential rainfall flooding, I would expect those to be considered for forming a new or supplementary scale for tropical cyclones.

[grife]

An excellent video, except you didn't give us the categories for the different pressures so we could use that information.

[mukrifachri]

Some countries already detach disaster warnings from the intensity of the phenomenon itself - ie. Japan Meteorological Agency does this very well for storm surges/inundation risk and landslides as well as for earthquake shaking (presumably incl. liquefaction but they protect against that pretty well).

Now if only every country does this...


Also AFAIK central eye pressures have already been used (albeit as a secondary reference) in Saffir-Simpson scale ?

[PhantomKING]

3:11

Therapist: Category 120 hurricane doesn't exist, it can't hurt you.

Category 120 hurricane: