Hurricanes Are Too Fast for Category 5
At 149 miles an hour, the world’s fastest roller coaster, Formula Rossa in Abu Dhabi, is so quick that riders must don goggles to protect their eyes from the wind. But even the formidable Formula Rossa is no match for the 157-mile-an-hour-plus winds of a Category 5 hurricane, which can collapse a home’s walls and cave in its roof. And yet, according to a new paper, Category 5 may itself be no match for several recent hurricanes.
Right now, every hurricane with maximum sustained wind speeds above 156 miles an hour is considered a Category 5 on the —whether it’s blowing 160 mph, like , or roughly 215 mph, like , which struck Mexico in 2015. To distinguish between extremeextreme storms, James Kossin, a distinguished science adviser at the climate nonprofit First Street Foundation, and Michael Wehner, a senior scientist studying extreme weather events at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, explored adding a hypothetical sixth step to the scale. Category 6 hurricanes, they write, would encompass winds above 192 miles an hour. By their definition, five hurricanes—all of which occurred in about the previous decade—would have been classified as Category 6.
