With the devastation caused by Dorian still fresh in people’s minds, at least one meteorologist is calling for a revision in the scale used to describe hurricanes. “A low-end Category 5 with 160 mile-an-hour winds has 60 per cent less destructive power than Dorian had,” meteorologist Jeff Masters told The CBC. “So yeah, it might be good to include an extra notch on the scale to show that ‘Hey, these sorts of extreme storms are going to do a lot more damage’.”
Speaking of the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale, Masters observes that having a scale focused only on wind speed may cause people to underestimate the risk, noting “We’ve seen time and time again when a hurricane that has a relatively low rating on the wind scale, say Category 1 or 2, when it comes ashore, people don’t take it seriously.” Masters instead suggests new scales should be developed, considering not only wind speed, but also storm surge, and heavy rains. “You really need to have three separate scales, or maybe you need to have a color-coded danger scale for all of these factors taken together,” Masters told The CBC.
With ocean temperatures continuing to rise, the threat of these storms will only grow, as warm water helps to contribute to the strength of hurricanes. Says Masters, “We can anticipate as the decades come, we’re going to see a sharp increase in these sort of mega-hurricanes projecting out into this century.”
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