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Ryan Maue on Hurricane Hype
- Saturday, January 3, 2026
Inventing a Cat 6 hurricane classification sounds a bit like using the number of “named storms” to make a season sound worse than past seasons before storms were even given names or before we could even detect them!
Exactly Michael Mann’s point.
Why stop at Category 6 when 10 would suit the alarmists much better? This could be done by concocting some sort of formula that includes wind speed, storm surge levels, numbers killed and displaced, and costs of damages done. What would be slyly avoided is mention of population increases over the past century as well as rises in reconstruction costs. But why let the facts get in the way of a good story?
Wasn’t it 2012 when they made the following changes to the Saffir-Simpson scale?
Category 1 (74-95 mph), “Minimal Damage” changed to “Some Damage”, chart color changed from green to yellow.
Category 2 (96-110 mph), “Moderate Damage” changed to “Extensive Damage”, chart color changed from yellow to gold.
Category 3 (111-130 mph), upper limit changed to 129 mph, “Extensive Damage” changed to “Devastating Damage”, chart color remains orange.
Category 4 (131-155 mph), lower limit changed to 130 mph, upper limit changed to 156 mph, “Extreme Damage” changed to “Catastrophic Damage”, chart color remains orange-red.
Category 5 (156+ mph), lower limit changed to 157 mph, remains “Catastrophic Damage”, chart color remains dark red.
I’m surprised they don’t allow hurricanes to change categories based on their feelings, as perceived by Michael Mann himself.
Seems like hurricane and major hurricane are defined the same way.
Before enacting any classification change it is necessary to establish the purpose of these classifications. For M. Mann, it is obvious he believes it lends credibility to him and his climate catastrophe psyche.
Originally, as I have read, the SS scale was used when assessing the damage of the storm, which is basically for historical purposes.
Later, the SS scale was correlated to maximum sustained winds. Eye pressure and storm surge were added later.
All good. But for what purpose?
Meteorologists and atmospheric scientists are interested in a vast greater amount of data that what those classifications confer.
The hurricane classification serves only one purpose and is to alert the public to the relative risk of the storm. At Cat5 storm is in its purest sense a message to evacuate and if you don’t you probably will die. For that purpose, the categories serve very well.
As to the wind and storm surge post, 155 mph will devastate large swaths of area. Certain 180 mph will have a larger extent, but given the extent of the devastation, the higher wind speeds really does not change the fact that a disaster occurred. Same with storm surge. Certain 15 foot has more water and kinetic energy, but a 12 foot is so catastrophic that the difference holds very little meaning to the millions of people affected.
Yes, the physics are real, but the communications to the public does not benefit from a change.
Use the Cats for the public. If a more meaningful system for meteorologists, scientist, and those who dive deep into the data is useful, by all means come up with something, but I am willing to go out on a limb and claim that the scientists are interested in the quantity and quality of the data, not generalized categories.