The average person should not even really pay attention to the category of the storm. That is mostly of scientific concern. It measures the maximum wind speed found at the relatively tiny center of circulation which may or may not have anything to do with how destructive the rest of the storm is hundreds of miles away from the center, as the article points out. That can also depend on things that have nothing to do with the storm itself, such as whether it’s impacting an area with lax building codes that is unprepared for storm surge. People should forget about that scale and focus on what local authorities are saying about the potential danger.

If you live on the coast, following the details of the forecasts and warnings is extremely important. But my experience living a little over 100 miles inland taught me that the hurricane category is a useful predictor to some extent: anything below category 3 would weaken enough on its way inland that it wasn't a higher risk than routine severe thunderstorms, and didn't require any special advance preparations. The winds would merely be coming from a different direction than usual for our area, and only the areas usually prone to flash flooding had to worry about the volume of rain. It's location-specific, but it is possible to usefully distill the local risk profile down to something where the hurricane category tells you whether it's time to start worrying about that storm.

A comparison can be drawn to the scales used for measuring earthquakes. Although the Richter scale is quite common in many parts of the world, in Japan the Shindo scale is primarily used. This measures the local ground shaking intensity, as opposed to the Richter scale which measures the amount of energy released in the quake.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japan_Meteorological_Agency_se...

I think you’re in total agreement with the authors of this new system. They’re simply making a new categorization system that is closer to a 1:1 mapping between the classification and what local authorities are saying about potential danger.

It's easier to make the classification a better representation of danger than it is to convince people to ignore the rating and only listen to local authorities.

This article is about replacing the current scale with one that does factor in more than just wind speed. You're right that it's still just a number though.

I would think there is some legal and liability importance here. If you get another catagory that probably another thing insurance can deny claim for.

I'm conflicted on this.

Lax building codes in hurricane prone areas shouldn't exist after Hurricane Andrew in 1992 [0].

And then there was the Trump sharpie incident. [1]

Wind speed is the best metric (that's not corruptible by humans yet) that describes how dangerous a storm is.

[0]: https://www.npr.org/2024/10/15/nx-s1-5151844/tougher-buildin...

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_Dorian%E2%80%93Alaba...