Is our hurricane rating system outdated? A USF researcher suggests a change
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| Tropical Storm Debby |
As Tropical Storm Debby grazed the Tampa Bay area last August, many Floridians treated it like any other summer rainstorm: Inflatable floats dotted Bayshore Boulevard, curious onlookers flocked to the beach and drivers plowed through pooling floodwaters.
But Debby’s ugly side soon appeared.
About a day after the storm passed, the Alafia River swelled to nearly 20 feet, its highest level in seven years. Homes in Lithia and Riverview were inundated with floodwater. All told, the storm claimed 17 lives in the U.S., strengthening to a Category 1 storm at its peak but never becoming a major hurricane.
Researchers point to Debby as just one recent example of what’s wrong with how tropical cyclone risk is communicated. Forecasters in Tampa Bay warned about possible flash flooding and up to five feet of surge for the coasts, but for the chiseled Floridians who pride themselves on their storm hardiness, one main thing mattered in their decision-making: Debby was just a tropical storm.
The National Hurricane Center classifies hurricanes using the 1970s-era Saffir-Simpson Scale, which uses only wind speed as its guiding variable. A Category 1 storm has wind speeds up to 95 mph, a Category 2 up to 110 mph, and so on.
But Jennifer Collins believes there is a better way.
In 2021, Collins, a hurricane researcher and professor at the University of South Florida’s School of Geosciences, joined a team from the Netherlands to answer an increasingly common question in scientific circles: How can we better inform the public of hurricane risks — and make them safer?
Their solution was to build a new hurricane classification scale entirely, one that also accounts for the threats of storm surge and rainfall.