Researchers at the University of South Florida want to reimagine the way we categorize hurricanes. Currently, they’re rated on a scale of one to five based solely on wind speed. But Jennifer Collins, a professor of geosciences at USF, says there are two other factors that need to be considered that may be even more important.
“Our scale actually takes into account storm surge and rainfall. And this makes sense, because only 10% of fatalities come from wind alone,” Collins said.
Collins says factoring in rainfall and storm surge would allow forecasters to give a much more accurate threat level for each storm.
“We can have a category for each of those: Wind, storm surge, and rainfall. And then we have an overall category,” Collins said.
The overall category would normally be the highest value of the three ratings. But Collins says in certain instances, a storm could be rated as a category six.
“You’ve got at least two of the hazard-based categories are a cat-five, or, two of the categories are a cat-four and one is a cat-five,” Collins explained.
An example of a Category Six storm would be Hurricane Wilma from 2005 – it was a Category Four for wind speed and a Category Five for both rainfall and storm surge. Collins says she and her fellow researchers are planning on presenting their proposal to the National Hurricane Center in the near future.
