Tag: cat

November 11, 2013 0

Does the World Need a Category Six For Cyclones

By News Desk

Tweet With the disaster in the Philippines wrought by super typhoon Haiyan , once again the unseemly arguments appear about exactly how fast the winds were blowing at landfall and aw gee there were worse storms , the damage to global GDP was minor .  Eli however, and some others have another question.  Would it be useful to reformulate the Saffir-Simpson scale?  Actually two.  Would it also be useful to coordinate the new Saffir-Simpson scale with the Enhanced Fujita scale for tornadoes? The argument, at least the one the Bunny is making, has nothing to do with climate change, and everything to do with policy, construction codes, public safety and history.  Both the Saffir-Simpson and the Fujita scales were designed for public officials to use in determining how to react to cyclones and tornadoes.  The ranks are set not so much by wind speed and other parameters such as precipitation, as to the expected damage that a storm would do