From Category 1 to Category 5, hurricane forecasters' famous rating system has become ingrained in the minds of millions of Americans from Texas to Maine. The scale, known as the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale, is a rating based on the storm's maximum ...

As climate change continues to reshape the intensity and behavior of hurricanes, meteorologists and researchers are examining whether the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale, a decades-old classification system, still adequately communicates the full scope ...

For the last few years, I have opined about the inadequacy of the Saffir — Simpson scale for conveying the full impacts of hurricanes. Harvey (2017), Milton (2024) and Helene (2024) are examples of hurricanes that altered landscapes and entire regions ...

Do we need a better way to rate hurricanes, one that emphasizes the combination of wind speed, storm surge and rainfall, rather than wind alone? We seem to think so, and so do many other meteorologists, including Jennifer Collins, a professor and hurricane ...

Hurricane Erin reached Category 5 status with 160 mph winds on Saturday, August 16th. Erin is expected to continue intensifying. While researchers have proposed a Category 6 for hurricanes exceeding 192 mph, NOAA has no plans to change the current scale.

Her newly proposed hurricane category scale accounts for not just wind risk, but also rainfall and storm surge. Jennifer Collins, a researcher and School of Geosciences at USF professor, is helping develop a new hurricane scale, called the Tropical Cyclone ...

A University of South Florida researcher and a team from the Netherlands are proposing a new way to measure hurricane severity. Jennifer Collins had been studying evacuation patterns when she saw people would not leave high-risk areas unless the storm was ...