[sidlls]

I’ve been in cat 1 and cat 2 storms. They’re awesome in their power for destruction. I’ve evacuated from a category 4 storm, which did a huge amount of damage in the city when it hit.

A category 5 storm is essentially going to destroy everything in its path already. What good would adding a 6th category do?

[nscalf]

I lived in Florida for a long time, I can tell you that people don’t evacuate when it’s a cat 4 threatening to maybe become a cat 5. Having a category meaning “this is much worse than a 4” would be meaningful here. I see no reason to have an upper limit, it just artificially makes everything at and above the cat 5 threshold mean the same thing.

Also, Florida homes are built from cement, meant to survive storms like that. The building codes come from hurricane andrew, a particularly damaging cat 5.

[matwood]

Florida gonna Florida. I grew up and still live in a hurricane area. Went through a cat 5 as a kid - not going to do that again. But, cat 2/3 or less I'm not going anywhere. Last time we took a direct cat 2, we didn't even lose power. Like you said, FL and really most of the southeast coast learned from Andrew. Simple changes like roof ties and more expensive ones like cement plank siding make a pretty significant difference [1].

TBH, my main concern in a storm is water. My house is ~12' off the ground and given its location, if there's water in the house we're basically in an end of days, biblical level storm.

[1] https://www.usglassmag.com/30-years-later-hurricane-andrew-r...

[Beldin]

> Having a category meaning “this is much worse than a 4” would be meaningful here.

But don't you think that cat 5 would become the new 4? That is: why do you think extending the scale will expand the range of warnings communicated, instead of smearing the existing range out over more values?

[deadbabe]

Not just cement, all new construction now requires impact windows and doors that can withstand a Cat 5 by default.

[kaliqt]

For Floridians, Cat 5 is scary but not that scary, Florida's one crazy state with sturdy buildings and only very select areas get leveled in major storms. There definitely needs to be a better way of rating hurricanes, for strength AND area of damage.

Hurricanes are extremely area focused, and they lose power FAST. It can miss you at the last second and not even knock a shingle off your roof, while leveling a trailer park 50 miles south of you.

[vitus]

Literally the only hurricane that made landfall in Florida as a Category 5 after Andrew was Michael in 2018, so most Floridians haven't experienced a Category 5 hurricane in decades (if ever). (Irma and Ian were downgraded before making landfall in the US.)

Michael did confirm that the new building codes were effective -- structures built prior to 2002 suffered much worse damage. From an early reconnaissance report [0]: "However, roof cover and wall cladding damage was still commonly observed even in newer structures. Failures were frequently observed in both engineered and non-engineered buildings."

Michael also highlighted that no matter how much you strengthen the building code, that means nothing for old buildings that haven't been updated, or for infrastructure (downed power lines and transmission towers, washed out roads and bridges, etc).

Would a Category 5 hurricane be more damaging if it struck Manhattan rather than Miami? Absolutely. IMO that's a consequence of climate change we should be worrying more about than peak storm strength -- more places (that don't necessarily have the same historical awareness) are going to be affected by stronger storms (and more frequently! 2020 saw two back-to-back Cat 4s make landfall in Nicaragua 15 miles and 2 weeks apart).

To say that Cat 5 isn't that scary in Florida is underestimating how incredibly rare these are, and overestimating the building code's coverage / efficacy.

[0] https://www.weather.gov/media/tae/events/20181010_Michael/St...

[LorenPechtel]

How much hardening is required to not be destroyed.