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This topic has been a perennial among weather geeks and the public alike, but has come front and center again with back-to-back years of tropical cyclones producing far more damage, death and destruction than their "Category" would imply. And it's not just intuition. For many decades, the Saffir-Simpson Scale associated specific threat levels with each incrementally increasing category. For example, storm surge was directly linked to category. But this is FALSE. Minimum central pressure ranges were linked to category, but this is also FALSE. While these two examples of fallacious attribution have since been removed from the scale's definitions, public confusion remains, and who could blame them? Each and every new storm is designated with either a non-number, call it a big, fat nothing if you like, and then a range of 1 though 5, with only 3 and above being "Major." Why would anyone concern themselves about some storm not deemed by the professionals to be major? Like many things in life, reality is far more nuanced. What was perhaps good shorthand when tropical meteorology was not nearly as advanced, and the public communication science was in its infancy, may actually be doing more harm than good now in too many situations. Bryan Norcross just penned an article for Capital Weather Gang that puts forth what seem like some good ideas. He proposes to keep the SS Scale, but just drop one word, and add another: Quote: Considering that most tropical cyclone deaths are due to rain (flooding) and surge (flooding), the idea of issuing the most visible Watches and Warnings based solely wind speed alone (Cat nothing, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5), and that the public keeps getting confused ("They said it was only going to be a Category One!"), something really has to be done. |