The longstanding hurricane rating system, the Saffir-Simpson Scale, only takes into account sustained wind speeds and not the ...

If a storm is a Category 3, 4 or 5, it is deemed a "major" hurricane due to the potential for "significant loss of life and ...

There is no “Category 6” on the five-level Saffir-Simpson scale. While a sixth tier has been discussed in hypothetical terms, it is not a real measurement of hurricane severity in 2024.

Following a hurricane at a CATEGORY 4, most of an area will be “uninhabitable” for anywhere between weeks or months. CATEGORY 5: This is the highest category on the Saffir-Simpson wind scale.

Let's break it down. Big Picture -What It Measures: As the name implies, the current version is strictly a wind scale that rates a hurricane's sustained winds (not gusts) from Category 1 through 5.

But so far, it's been hard to switch because Americans, everyone knows that Saffir-Simpson scale. Everyone understands hurricane Category 1 through 5.

At that point, the NHC uses the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Scale of intensity to categorize it on a scale of 1-5.

"The Saffir-Simpson scale is a measure of wind speed. But far more people die from hurricane flooding than from strong winds. Hurricane Florence made landfall near Wilmington as a Category 1 storm.

Erin continues to grow in size, trying to restrengthen to a category 3 hurricane before passing to our east. At 11pm, the center of Hurricane Erin was located near latitude 32.8 North, longitude 73.1 ...

Hurricane Erin reached the maximum intensity on the Saffir-Simpson scale last Saturday (16), becoming a category 5 storm with winds of up to 260 km/h (161 mph).