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YSK a storm's "category" isn't indicative of it's destructive potential.
Why YSK: The Saffir-Simpson Scale, or the naming convention used to mark the progression of a tropical depression to a tropical storm, to a category 1-5 hurricane, is dog shit.
It's only based on the minimum sustained windspeed for one minute. That's it. Nothing else. There's not a single other bit of data or analysis that contributes to a storm's designation as a tropical depression or category 4 hurricane. It's all based on minimum one-minute-sustained windspeed.
Minimum sustained windspeed for one minute isn't what takes your roof off your house or floods your neighborhood. The distinction between a category 2 hurricane and a category 3 hurricane has nothing to do with any water hazards, which are far more dangerous, damaging, and lethal than wind-related hazards.
If a hurricane stalls and dumps the equivalent of the Chesapeake Bay into your back yard, but the wind speed never exceeds 74 mph for an entire minute, it won't even be a category 1 hurricane, technically. Think about the post Hurricane Katrina environment. Or post-Hurricane Harvey. Or Maria. Or Dorian. Or Ian. The primary issue was flooding - yes, it was windy, but the primary hazards were water related.
People who say things like "we won't evacuate until it's a category 3 hurricane or higher" without ever realizing that the category designator of the hurricane means fuck-all for their total hazard exposure.
Landfall is dumb too. It's when the center of the eye crosses land. If you live in a coastal community and you're basing your decisions on landfall timelines (because that's what the news tracks), you're effectively saying you're going to wait until the storm is halfway over before taking action.
We're awful at contextualizing hazard risk when it comes to hurricanes / tropical cyclones. We're unfathomably bad at it. Not because we don't understand storms or lack the relevant data, we just hang on to outdated terminology that's based on shit that isn't useful whatsoever.
Source https://medium.com/what-could-go-wrong/data-literacy-hurricane-sally-5a11c30dfc01
Why YSK: The Saffir-Simpson Scale, or the naming convention used to mark the progression of a tropical depression to a tropical storm, to a category 1-5 hurricane, is dog shit.
It's only based on the minimum sustained windspeed for one minute. That's it. Nothing else. There's not a single other bit of data or analysis that contributes to a storm's designation as a tropical depression or category 4 hurricane. It's all based on minimum one-minute-sustained windspeed.
Minimum sustained windspeed for one minute isn't what takes your roof off your house or floods your neighborhood. The distinction between a category 2 hurricane and a category 3 hurricane has nothing to do with any water hazards, which are far more dangerous, damaging, and lethal than wind-related hazards.
If a hurricane stalls and dumps the equivalent of the Chesapeake Bay into your back yard, but the wind speed never exceeds 74 mph for an entire minute, it won't even be a category 1 hurricane, technically. Think about the post Hurricane Katrina environment. Or post-Hurricane Harvey. Or Maria. Or Dorian. Or Ian. The primary issue was flooding - yes, it was windy, but the primary hazards were water related.
People who say things like "we won't evacuate until it's a category 3 hurricane or higher" without ever realizing that the category designator of the hurricane means fuck-all for their total hazard exposure.
Landfall is dumb too. It's when the center of the eye crosses land. If you live in a coastal community and you're basing your decisions on landfall timelines (because that's what the news tracks), you're effectively saying you're going to wait until the storm is halfway over before taking action.
We're awful at contextualizing hazard risk when it comes to hurricanes / tropical cyclones. We're unfathomably bad at it. Not because we don't understand storms or lack the relevant data, we just hang on to outdated terminology that's based on shit that isn't useful whatsoever.
Source https://medium.com/what-could-go-wrong/data-literacy-hurricane-sally-5a11c30dfc01
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