Why are category 5 hurricanes rare

This is one of those rare Category 5 storms. But just how rare are Category 5 hurricanes? So let's dig up some data, and see how many hurricanes we've had in the Atlantic with those kind of wind speeds After a bit of digging, I found a good repository of data about past hurricanes on the weather. I wrote a bit of code to read and parse the data into a SAS dataset, I then plotted all the Atlantic hurricane paths on a map, and made the line segments bright red where the wind speed fit the Category 5 description.

This provides a good general idea of how often they occur, and also where they occur:. Click the map image above to see the full-size interactive version of the map, with HTML mouse-over text showing the hurricane names for the red Category 5 segments.

Here are some technical details about the code I used to create the map:. I also placed a table below the map. The table shows 34 Category 5 Atlantic hurricanes, based on more than years of data. I've included a snapshot image of a portion of the table below - you can click the snapshot to see the full interactive table , and then you can click each hurricane name to launch a Google search for more information.

Winds of this strength would make Dorian worthy of a category 6 rating, if it existed. If we were to add a category 6 to the scale, we must consider that the scale is not quite linear.

Winds for a category 2 hurricane span a range of just 15 mph, for example, but winds for a category 4 storm span a range of 27 mph. Regardless of this non-linearity, a one-category increase in intensity on the scale results in approximately four times more wind damage, according to the National Hurricane Center.

If we graph the scale Figure 1 below , it is apparent that a category 6 should probably start at winds of - mph. A category 7 hurricane would have winds of at least - mph.

By this logic, Hurricane Dorian would rate as a category 6 hurricane. Only one hurricane in world history would rank as a category 7: Hurricane Patricia of , which peaked with mph sustained winds off the Pacific coast of Mexico.

If one uses mph winds as the threshold for category 6, only five Atlantic hurricanes in recorded history would qualify. If we lower the threshold to mph, there are a total of eight that would rate as a category It is truly rare for a hurricane of this hypothetical category 6 intensity to make landfall. Expanding the definition of category 6 to include winds of mph or higher would add just one additional Atlantic landfalling category 6 hurricane: Hurricane Irma of , which made landfall on Barbuda, St.

Martin, and the British Virgin Islands with maximum sustained winds of mph. Dorian caused catastrophic damage, thanks in great part to its very slow motion of less than 5 mph over The Bahamas for the 27 hours it spent at category 5 strength. This slow motion and extreme intensity allowed Dorian to subject The Bahamas to the most fierce and prolonged battering by an Atlantic hurricane of any populated place in recorded history.

The death toll as of this writing is 56, with approximately people still missing. In , the United States began naming hurricanes exclusively after women. One of these was Hurricane Camille, a storm that landed along the Mississippi Gulf Coast late in the evening of August 17, However, the service estimates wind speeds reached miles per hour along the coast. The Category 5 hurricane killed people on the Gulf Coast.

But even after its wind speeds dropped below hurricane-level intensity, it continued to be deadly as it moved north across the country. In Virginia and West Virginia, flash flooding from the storm killed people. A group of people sift through the rubble of a house that was directly in the path of a tornado spawned by Hurricane Andrew. After the U. Feminists like Roxcy Bolton campaigned to stop associating women with natural disasters, and in the U.

In , Hurricane Andrew became the first of these male-named hurricanes to reach Category 5 in the U. It made landfall in southern Florida on August 24, , and reached sustained wind speeds of miles per hour. Environment Planet Possible India bets its energy future on solar—in ways both small and big. Environment As the EU targets emissions cuts, this country has a coal problem. Paid Content How Hong Kong protects its sea sanctuaries.

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