Category 6 Hurricane (1 Viewer)

[Heathen Saint]

The article calls Hurricane Katrina a category 5. It was a category 3 at landfall but due to it's size, fetch and the area it impacted it ended up being one of the worst disasters in US history. Category 3 does not represent the threat, only the wind speed.

Same goes for Tropical Storms Allison and Imelda or the unnamed tropical low that created the 2016 LA flooding or Hurricane Florence (cat 1). Those were closer to a cat 3-4 based on impact to property than some random tropical storm and easily posed a much bigger threat than Hurricane Patricia did as the strongest hurricane ever recorded. Patricia was fast moving and tiny. The hurricane force winds only extended out about 15 miles from the center, it was moving quickly, hit an unpopulated area with little surge impact. The costliest disaster in US history was Sandy, it's classification was a post tropical storm and no category assigned. Sandy was the equivalent to a category 1 hurricane, the damage was greater than any category 5 ever seen. However, that damage was spread over such a massive area it would be a category 3-4 based on impact to life and property.

Agree completely.

On the same level, some hurricanes should be downgraded based on impacts even though the wind speeds were higher.

I dunno about this. While I agree 100% in theory with adding storm surge, rain and other categories as part of the equation, I think that downgrading a storm with 200 mph winds simply because it's fast moving and doesn't have a high storm surge would be pretty dangerous in terms of not effectively communicating a threat based upon how we classify storms now via the saffir-sampson wind scale. If the goal of communication of this category is to preserve life, I think it still stands.

Communicating to people that there's, say, a Cat 2 or 3 hurricane who don't understand what that means or don't have the means to (elderly, non-native speaker, cognitive impairments, economically disadvantaged, whatever) would seem to communicate that the threat isn't as severe relatively speaking. Sure, any category of hurricane with regard to wind speed can technically kill you, but wind speeds of a 5 can cave your roof in depending on the home - while a 3 will likely only incur damage to your roof (maybe more if you're in a mobile home).

I speak to so many survivors that simply are not prepared to deal with the impacts because it was just a tropical storm or a cat 1.

Right, and I think it's a huge issue. I'm spitballing here - but maybe it makes sense to rate hurricanes not on a combination of threats, but if any one of the variables that indicate a threat to life are high?

The variables that contribute to life-threatening hurricane weather could be as you said:
- Wind speed (already estimates property damage within this)
- Storm surge ( i think SLOSH predicts / analyzes this?)
- Rainfall amount/Flood potential

Examples:
Hurricane Alpha:
Wind speed/rating: 110 mph/ 2
Storm surge/rating: 25 feet / 5
Rainfall/flood potential: 17 inches/ 4
Final rating: Category 5
Why: High probability of life-threatening storm surge and threat of destruction to structures, property


Hurricane Beta:
Wind speed/rating: 175 mph/5
Storm surge/rating: 0-0.5 ft. / None
Rainfall/flood potential: 4 inches/None
Final rating: Category 5
Why: High probability of life-threatening wind and threat of destruction to structures, property

I dunno, just some thoughts

 

[Madmarsha]

I feel the scale shouldn't be based on wind alone and adding a cat 6 level is kind of silly. Rating categories is a meteorological thing right now, it should be based on impacts.

Hurricanes really should be ranked on threat level to population from all impacts. Take into account wind, storm surge and rainfall. The article calls Hurricane Katrina a category 5. It was a category 3 at landfall but due to it's size, fetch and the area it impacted it ended up being one of the worst disasters in US history. Category 3 does not represent the threat, only the wind speed.

Same goes for Tropical Storms Allison and Imelda or the unnamed tropical low that created the 2016 LA flooding or Hurricane Florence (cat 1). Those were closer to a cat 3-4 based on impact to property than some random tropical storm and easily posed a much bigger threat than Hurricane Patricia did as the strongest hurricane ever recorded. Patricia was fast moving and tiny. The hurricane force winds only extended out about 15 miles from the center, it was moving quickly, hit an unpopulated area with little surge impact. The costliest disaster in US history was Sandy, it's classification was a post tropical storm and no category assigned. Sandy was the equivalent to a category 1 hurricane, the damage was greater than any category 5 ever seen. However, that damage was spread over such a massive area it would be a category 3-4 based on impact to life and property.

On the same level, some hurricanes should be downgraded based on impacts even though the wind speeds were higher.

I kind of like the way California rates the atmospheric river events. They keep it really simple. Minor, moderate, major and extreme impacts. They assign an impact level to rainfall, mountain snow, coastal impacts from waves and then wind. It identifies each threat and communicates to the public what should be the biggest concern.

I speak to so many survivors that simply are not prepared to deal with the impacts because it was just a tropical storm or a cat 1.

 

[buzd]

While we're at it, can I petition to change it to "himicane" instead of hurricane? I mean, we do have male names now.

The word hurricane comes from the Taino Native American word, hurucane, meaning evil spirit of the wind.

 

[Madmarsha]

The word hurricane comes from the Taino Native American word, hurucane, meaning evil spirit of the wind.

Oh.

 

[bclemms]

How do you feel about naming winter storms?

Indifferent to names. I do think blizzards should be categorized by intensity after witnessing the Buffalo, NY blizzard during Christmas in 2022. I've been in so many blizzards that are just hyped up winter storms but ultimately meet minimum blizzard criteria, barely. The difference between that and what I experienced in Buffalo with feet of snow, blizzard conditions for 3 straight days and gusting winds to 100mph with temps at or below zero was closer to "Day After Tomorrow" than it was the typical blizzard.

Same with ice storms. We haven't seen a really high end ice storm in decades. The 2021 Texas storm gets labeled as an ice storm but really it was just a light glazing of ice and a little sleet. The damage from that event was extreme cold in a place that had really just ignored the risk to infrastructure. The 1994 ice storm that impacted the MS Delta is another example of something that will eventually happened. Place that storms over a Texas or a strip of metros and things will get very interesting. That storm had over 2" of ice, pretty much took out every tree and powerline across a dozen counties and took months to clean up. Put that same storm in a metro today and all powerlines go down, trees go down, cell towers literally collapse due to the weight. It would take weeks to restore power and coms.

There are winters in US history that people simply would not believe. In 1899 the MS River was frozen solid in New Orleans. In 1895 Houston got 20" of snow in a day. In 1963 Memphis got 16" of snow in a day and over 2' from one storm and was basically shut down for a week. Whether or not these extreme winter events are still possible due to warming is really undetermined but if something like those winters happened today it would be catastrophic. People really underestimate winter.

 

[Optimus Prime]

I remember in the DC area in mid 90s we had a terrible ice storm - like half inch to an inch of solid ice covering everything and it was so cold the salt wasn't working.

I remember the news saying basically "for the love of god, if you don't absolutely have to go anywhere stay home"

The whole area shut down for like a week

 

[brandon8283]

People really underestimate winter.

That's because we don't have them any more.

 

[guidomerkinsrules]

I remember in the DC area in mid 90s we had a terrible ice storm - like half inch to an inch of solid ice covering everything and it was so cold the salt wasn't working.

I remember the news saying basically "for the love of god, if you don't absolutely have to go anywhere stay home"

The whole area shut down for like a week

if we're talking about the same time, I was in NYC when that started; but i had to get back to grad school (NC) and was on the train - the weather just about doubled the travel time

 

[Optimus Prime]

if we're talking about the same time, I was in NYC when that started; but i had to get back to grad school (NC) and was on the train - the weather just about doubled the travel time

I want to say it was 94 or 95

 

[bclemms]

That's because we don't have them any more.

Kind of, Buffalo has seen some of the most extreme weather events in their very long history the last 10 years. Between the 2016 and 2022 lake effect snow events that dropped 8 feet in 24 hours and one of the worst blizzards in history. With that said, they are in a unique location where climate change is making the lake effect events more extreme. When the lake is frozen, there is no lake effect. Basically the intensity of lake effect snow events is determined by the difference in water temperature vs 850mb temps. When the lake stays warm and doesn't freeze over it leaves a much bigger window for lake effect events to happen and then with warmer lake temps it increases the amount of snow in these events.

They had gone almost 40 years without an extreme blizzard, something that used to happen a couple times per decade. That means 70% of the population or more wasn't old enough to drive the last time there was a high end blizzard. Of the other 30%, it wasn't exactly fresh on their mind or maybe they misattributed improvements in technology and infrastructure to the lack of severe blizzard events. So when that blizzard struck, it caught everyone by surprise (except me of course ). The models clearly showed it, Buffalo had just gone through the record breaking lake effect event and the snowfall forecast for the blizzard was half as much snow (still 3-4 feet). The media was preoccupied with Chicago and Christmas, there was no hype. I was shocked leading into the event because the models were showing long duration 60mph sustained winds with gusts over 100mph with heavy snow and extreme cold. Reed Timmer and myself were literally the only ones there covering it. We were preparing like we were about to intercept a major hurricane and couldn't believe how casual everyone was being about it. The bravado of the people in Buffalo was pretty crazy. The "we are from Buffalo, this is normal" attitude leading up to the blizzard was really obvious. Reed was even catching hell on social media for "hyping" the event. I can't argue that he does hype some events but it was absolutely warranted in this case and he was catching hell.

So when the blizzard did strike, the city was as paralyzed as I have ever seen any city from a disaster. It took a week before people could drive, the airport was closed for 8 days straight. People were looting for basic supplies like food and water because everything was shut down. There were drifts 40 feet tall. The roads looked like someone pressed a button and everything was frozen in time with cars littering every road abandoned. Plows couldn't plow because they lost so much control of the roads the snow got too deep and plows were getting stuck. I have video of a huge front end loader with chains even getting stuck. Even where it wasn't too deep cars were blocking the road so it couldn't be plowed and the cars were perfect spots for drifts to set up. They had to remove thousands of cars with heavy duty forklifts just to be able to start clearing the roads. I pulled out fire trucks trying to respond that were stuck only for them to get stuck again 100 yards down the road. At one point I pulled out a fire fighter on a snow mobile that got buried in a drift. Reed and I rescued a group of 3 just 30 feet from the hotel lobby. They didn't know if they were 30 feet from the hotel lobby or on the moon. It's the same thing when you can't see the ground let alone surroundings. The group of 3 was a couple that had rescued another lady. I had rented a diesel pickup truck and was able to get around longer than most but at one point it took me 4 hours to get 11 miles. I was driving blind at 1-2mph feeling for plow lines and using GPS to get closer to the city where buildings would at least block the wind to allow brief visibility in places. Once at the hotel everything was on foot and even then it was to a very area so we would not get lost. The next day we were still firmly in an intense blizzard but it let up enough to where I could drive around about a square mile area downtown. Reed and I used our rental vehicle to blast drifts just to allow us to get around that 1 square mile area. If one of us got stuck the other would pull out. Thankfully I had a heavy duty tow rope. We picked up homeless people, local residents, tourists and people just traveling through that were stranded, some had extreme frostbite. We picked up cops, firefighters and EMT's that were stranded and couldn't even get rescued by their own. All that bravado was replaced by humility really quick.

My point is that while we haven't had some of these extreme winters, we are still seeing these extreme winter events, some of which have been made worse by climate change. When these extreme winter events happen now it is catching everyone by surprise. So what happens if we have a truly extreme winter? The last two winters we had quick bursts of what we consider extreme or record breaking cold. It got down into the single digits in north Louisiana and central MS. This "record breaking cold" was not even close to record breaking. The all time lows in Louisiana and MS are -16 and -19. So what we are calling extreme cold now is 20 degrees warmer than record levels. 20 degree differences is the difference between record cold for Arkansas and Montana. It's a huge shift. So if we were to get a truly record breaking cold event in the mid or deep south, it would be catastrophic on levels we can not imagine and far worse than these events would have been 50-100 years ago. Imagine a circumstance in which every house over 3 states needs to be replumbed and cities water infrastructure being decimated. The question becomes, is it possible to still get that cold? Looking at the data, particularly in Alaska and it is quite obvious that are odds are becoming much lower. The days in which Alaska hits -60 has become quite rare. However, that data is starting to show that extreme cold is not getting warmer, just occurring less frequently. The data is also showing it is becoming more common to get short bursts of really cold weather in the south even if the average temperature of winter is increasing. So I think we are only slightly less likely to have a 1899 type winter event occur again. While it was extremely rare even before climate change, it will happen again at some point and we'll be completely caught by surprise.

 

[guidomerkinsrules]

I want to say it was 94 or 95

Yeah that was probably the same system

 

[brandon8283]

Kind of, Buffalo has seen some of the most extreme weather events in their very long history the last 10 years. Between the 2016 and 2022 lake effect snow events that dropped 8 feet in 24 hours and one of the worst blizzards in history. With that said, they are in a unique location where climate change is making the lake effect events more extreme. When the lake is frozen, there is no lake effect. Basically the intensity of lake effect snow events is determined by the difference in water temperature vs 850mb temps. When the lake stays warm and doesn't freeze over it leaves a much bigger window for lake effect events to happen and then with warmer lake temps it increases the amount of snow in these events.

They had gone almost 40 years without an extreme blizzard, something that used to happen a couple times per decade. That means 70% of the population or more wasn't old enough to drive the last time there was a high end blizzard. Of the other 30%, it wasn't exactly fresh on their mind or maybe they misattributed improvements in technology and infrastructure to the lack of severe blizzard events. So when that blizzard struck, it caught everyone by surprise (except me of course ). The models clearly showed it, Buffalo had just gone through the record breaking lake effect event and the snowfall forecast for the blizzard was half as much snow (still 3-4 feet). The media was preoccupied with Chicago and Christmas, there was no hype. I was shocked leading into the event because the models were showing long duration 60mph sustained winds with gusts over 100mph with heavy snow and extreme cold. Reed Timmer and myself were literally the only ones there covering it. We were preparing like we were about to intercept a major hurricane and couldn't believe how casual everyone was being about it. The bravado of the people in Buffalo was pretty crazy. The "we are from Buffalo, this is normal" attitude leading up to the blizzard was really obvious. Reed was even catching hell on social media for "hyping" the event. I can't argue that he does hype some events but it was absolutely warranted in this case and he was catching hell.

So when the blizzard did strike, the city was as paralyzed as I have ever seen any city from a disaster. It took a week before people could drive, the airport was closed for 8 days straight. People were looting for basic supplies like food and water because everything was shut down. There were drifts 40 feet tall. The roads looked like someone pressed a button and everything was frozen in time with cars littering every road abandoned. Plows couldn't plow because they lost so much control of the roads the snow got too deep and plows were getting stuck. I have video of a huge front end loader with chains even getting stuck. Even where it wasn't too deep cars were blocking the road so it couldn't be plowed and the cars were perfect spots for drifts to set up. They had to remove thousands of cars with heavy duty forklifts just to be able to start clearing the roads. I pulled out fire trucks trying to respond that were stuck only for them to get stuck again 100 yards down the road. At one point I pulled out a fire fighter on a snow mobile that got buried in a drift. Reed and I rescued a group of 3 just 30 feet from the hotel lobby. They didn't know if they were 30 feet from the hotel lobby or on the moon. It's the same thing when you can't see the ground let alone surroundings. The group of 3 was a couple that had rescued another lady. I had rented a diesel pickup truck and was able to get around longer than most but at one point it took me 4 hours to get 11 miles. I was driving blind at 1-2mph feeling for plow lines and using GPS to get closer to the city where buildings would at least block the wind to allow brief visibility in places. Once at the hotel everything was on foot and even then it was to a very area so we would not get lost. The next day we were still firmly in an intense blizzard but it let up enough to where I could drive around about a square mile area downtown. Reed and I used our rental vehicle to blast drifts just to allow us to get around that 1 square mile area. If one of us got stuck the other would pull out. Thankfully I had a heavy duty tow rope. We picked up homeless people, local residents, tourists and people just traveling through that were stranded, some had extreme frostbite. We picked up cops, firefighters and EMT's that were stranded and couldn't even get rescued by their own. All that bravado was replaced by humility really quick.

My point is that while we haven't had some of these extreme winters, we are still seeing these extreme winter events, some of which have been made worse by climate change. When these extreme winter events happen now it is catching everyone by surprise. So what happens if we have a truly extreme winter? The last two winters we had quick bursts of what we consider extreme or record breaking cold. It got down into the single digits in north Louisiana and central MS. This "record breaking cold" was not even close to record breaking. The all time lows in Louisiana and MS are -16 and -19. So what we are calling extreme cold now is 20 degrees warmer than record levels. 20 degree differences is the difference between record cold for Arkansas and Montana. It's a huge shift. So if we were to get a truly record breaking cold event in the mid or deep south, it would be catastrophic on levels we can not imagine and far worse than these events would have been 50-100 years ago. Imagine a circumstance in which every house over 3 states needs to be replumbed and cities water infrastructure being decimated. The question becomes, is it possible to still get that cold? Looking at the data, particularly in Alaska and it is quite obvious that are odds are becoming much lower. The days in which Alaska hits -60 has become quite rare. However, that data is starting to show that extreme cold is not getting warmer, just occurring less frequently. The data is also showing it is becoming more common to get short bursts of really cold weather in the south even if the average temperature of winter is increasing. So I think we are only slightly less likely to have a 1899 type winter event occur again. While it was extremely rare even before climate change, it will happen again at some point and we'll be completely caught by surprise.

Bro I said 8 words.

 

[bclemms]

Bro I said 8 words.

But you said them to the wrong person.

 

[brandon8283]

But you said them to the wrong person.

Touché

 

[guidomerkinsrules]

But you said them to the wrong person.

You might be the funniest doomsayer out there