It’s a number attached to every hurricane, crucial to emergency response teams and city officials to mobilize preparedness: the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale, characterized by five categories.

Storms like Chantal are categorized based on one danger marker. Lower category storms are still extremely dangerous due to ...

The five categories of the storm are related to their wind speed, but they also give us insight into their potential for damage. By Jesus Jiménez Hurricanes are categorized by their wind speeds ...

Hurricane-force winds: Winds that are 74 mph or greater. Hurricane-force winds weaken the farther you move away from the eye. In just a few miles, you can drop a dozen miles per hour or more.

TOLEDO, Ohio — Every summer, hurricane season rolls in with a swirl of names, warnings, and numbers. But what do those category numbers — 1 through 5 — actually mean? The Saffir-Simpson ...

Why hurricane wind speeds don't tell the full story 02:53. Tropical systems begin as tropical depressions, which are areas of low pressure with wind speeds of up to 38 miles per hour.

A storm surge is when storm-driven winds push water toward the coastline. As the tide rises, the water overflows onto coastal ...

Hurricane categories can show how strong a storm like Maria, Katrina or Matthew is on a scale of 1-5. But some say there should be a 6.

Hurricane Harvey’s landfall near Rockport in 2017 is a grim example of a Category 4 storm. Winds this fierce can blow out windows, rip off shingles, and even tear away portions of roofs.

Landfall: Category 3 hurricane with sustained winds of 125 mph (205 km/h) near Buras-Triumph, Louisiana on Aug. 28, 2005, then the Lousiana/Mississippi border with winds of 120 mph (193 km/h).

The hurricane categories run from 1 to 5, with Category 5 hurricanes having sustained wind speeds higher than 156 mph — enough to produce "catastrophic" damage, which NOAA says can result in ...