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    • Is a Category 6 Hurricane Possible? Milton makes people talk
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    Is a Category 6 Hurricane Possible? Milton makes people talk

    Vaseline Posted on

    Milton’s race from a Category 2 hurricane to a Category 5 hurricane has led people to wonder if the hurricane could continue to climb to a Category 6.

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    Milton’s race from a Category 2 hurricane to a Category 5 hurricane in just a few hours has people wondering if the powerful storm could potentially become a Category 6.

    The hurricane heading into the Gulf of Mexico quickly became very strong on Monday, exploding from a 60 mph tropical storm on Sunday morning to a powerful Category 5 hurricane at 186 mph — an eye-popping increase from 130 mph in 36 hours.

    The rapidly developing hurricane that shows no signs of stopping will not technically become a Category 6 because the category does not currently exist. But it could quickly reach the level of a hypothetical Category 6. Experts have sparked debate and arguments about whether the National Hurricane Center’s long-used scale for classifying hurricane wind speeds from Category 1 to 5 might need an overhaul .

    Milton is already in thin air by surpassing 155 mph winds and becoming a Category 5. But if it reaches winds of 186 mph, it will cross a threshold that only five hurricanes and typhoons have reached since 1980, according to Michael Wehner. scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and Jim Kossin, a retired federal scientist and scientific advisor at the nonprofit First Street Foundation.

    Live updates Hurricane Milton is becoming ‘explosive’ stronger with wind speeds of 300 km/h

    The pair wrote a study examining whether the extreme storms could become the basis for a Category 6 hurricane designation. All five storms occurred in the past decade.

    The scientists say some of the more intense cyclones are being driven by record warm waters in the world’s oceans, especially in the Gulf of Mexico and parts of Southeast Asia and the Philippines.

    Kossin and Wehner said they were not proposing to add a Category 6 to the wind scale, but were trying to “inform broader discussions” about communicating the growing risks in a warming world.

    Other weather experts hope wind speed categories are de-emphasized, saying they do not adequately reflect a hurricane’s broader potential impacts, such as storm surges and inland flooding. Helene’s worst damage came when the storm reached the Carolinas and had already been downgraded from a hurricane to a tropical storm.

    What is the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale?

    The Hurricane Center has used the familiar scale since the 1970s – with wind speed ranges for each of the five categories. The minimum threshold for Category 5 winds is 250 km/h.

    Designed by engineer Herbert Saffir and modified by former center director Robert Simpson, the scale stops at Category 5 because such high winds “would cause serious damage that is serious no matter how well it is designed,” Simpson said during a 1999 interview.

    The open-ended Category 5 describes everything from “a nominal Category 5 to infinity,” Kossin said. “That becomes increasingly inadequate over time as climate change creates more and more of these unprecedented intensities.”

    More: ‘Category 5’ was considered the worst hurricane. There’s something scarier, says research.

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