Cool!
Can you point me to the other (older) system? The only rating that turned up for me in a search was the Saffir-Simpson, and it’s origin is fairly recent.
https://www.u-s-history.com/pages/h2125.html
Quote:
“Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Scale
The United States uses the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Scale developed in 1969. Categories are used to predict how much damage to structures is to be expected, how much flooding, and what the storm surge will be. Neither rainfall nor location is taken into account. These categories are:
Category One
Sustained winds: 74–95 mph
Storm surge: 4–5 ft
Central pressure: 28.94 inHg; 980 mbars
Potential damage: No significant damage to building structures. Damage primarily to unanchored mobile homes, shrubbery, and trees. Also, some coastal flooding and minor pier damage.
Example storms: Hurricane Agnes (1972); Hurricane Danny (1997).
Category Two
Sustained winds: 96–110 mph
Storm surge: 6–8 ft
Central Pressure: 28.50–28.91 inHg; 965–979 mbars
Potential damage: Some roofing material, door, and window damage. Considerable damage to vegetation, mobile homes, etc. Flooding damages piers and small craft in unprotected moorings may break their moorings.
Example storms: Hurricane Bob (1991); Hurricane Bonnie (1998).
Category Three
Sustained winds: 111–130 mph
Storm surge: 9–12 ft
Central pressure: 27.91–28.47 inHg; 945–964 mbars
Potential damage: Some structural damage to small residences and utility buildings, with a minor amount of curtainwall failures. Mobile homes are destroyed. Flooding near the coast destroys smaller structures with larger structures damaged by floating debris. Terrain may be flooded well inland.
Example storms: Great New England Hurricane of 1938; Hurricane Fran (1996); Hurricane Rita (2005).
Category Four
Sustained winds: 131–155 mph
Storm surge: 13–18 ft
Central pressure: 27.17–27.88 inHg; 920–944 mbars
Potential damage: More extensive curtainwall failures with some complete roof structure failure on small residences. Major erosion of beach areas. Terrain may be flooded well inland.
Example storms: The Great Galveston Hurricane of 1900; Hurricane Charley (2004); Hurricane Hugo (1989).
Category Five
Sustained winds: 156+ mph
Storm surge: 19+ ft
Central pressure: less than 27.17 inHg; less than 920 mbars
Potential damage: Complete roof failure on many residences and industrial buildings. Some complete structural failures with small utility buildings blown over or away. Flooding causes major damage to lower floors of all structures near the shoreline. Massive evacuation of residential areas may be required.
Example storms: Hurricane Camille (1969); Labor Day Hurricane of 1935.
Now if you look up the system, they JUST talk about wind speed.
Which is a load of crock, because storm surge does by far the most local damage to the spot hit.
https://www.nhc.noaa.gov/aboutsshws.php
So what category would you rate Hurricane Katrina as based just on its storm surge?
Hint, Hint...
“Katrina’s Storm Surge
A Weather Underground 16 part series about Hurricane Katrina, by Margie Kieper.
Hurricane Katrina of 2005 produced the highest storm surge ever recorded on the U.S. coast—an astonishing 27.8 feet at Pass Christian, Mississippi.
This bested the previous U.S. record of 22.8 feet, which also occurred at Pass Christian, during 1969’s Hurricane Camille. According to the NHC Katrina final report (PDF File), Hurricane Katrina brought a surge of 24 - 28 feet to a 20-mile stretch of Mississippi coast. Fully 90 miles of coast from eastern Louisiana to Alabama received a storm surge characteristic of a Category 3 hurricane. The colossal damage that resulted has been documented by blogger Margie Kieper during a series of blog posts that ran in the summer of 2006. The contents are reproduced here, and consist of an introduction explaining why the surge was so large, and 16 parts exploring the damage done to each stretch of the Gulf Coast ravaged by Hurricane Katrina in 2005.”
https://www.wunderground.com/hurricane/Katrinas_surge_contents.asp
One of the newer measures of how bad a storm is is Integrated Kinetic Energy. (IKE).
I haven’t fully bought into this measure, because it is difficult to calculate and thus easy to fudge the numbers for political reasons.
Here is a master fudger in action:
“Sandy packed more energy than Katrina at landfall
By Brian McNoldy”
Extra-tropical Sandy was the leftists cause celbre of the day. So they wanted to make it ‘worse than’ Katrina.
In reality, extra-tropical Sandy was not even close to Hurricane Katrina.
“There is a metric that quantifies the energy of a storm based on how far out tropical-storm force winds extend from the center, known as Integrated Kinetic Energy or IKE*. In modern records, Sandy’s IKE ranks second among all hurricanes at landfall, higher than devastating storms like Hurricane Katrina, Andrew and Hugo, and second only to Hurricane Isabel in 2003.”
If you take out the two pretenders, Isabel and Sandy, Hurricane Katrina was number one in IKE.
A bit of fudging on the extent of the winds in this method goes a long way to boosting the IKE of a hurricane or a ‘extra-tropical’ storm.
“Hurricane Katrina was “only” a Category 3 storm at landfall, yet ended up being the most costly natural disaster in our nation’s history due its impact on a vulnerable, highly populated low lying city. Sandy had Category 1 winds at landfall yet was able to create very significant storm surge over hundreds of miles of highly populated coastline. Katrina’s IKE was more concentrated, Sandy’s IKE was more spread out. This metric - more than wind speed - encapsulates the respective storms’ horrific effects. Sandy may end up as the second most costly storm in U.S. history. Given its top ranking IKE and the area it impacted, that should come as no surprise.”