Category 6 Hurricanes

Is there such a thing as a Category 6 Hurricane? Not according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), which uses the Saffir-Simpson scale to measure hurricane intensity. According to them, hurricane categories are from 1 to 5. However, I have seen a couple of storms last year reach 175 mph. Does that warrant a Category 6? Camille hit 200 mph, but that was a gust. Isabel hit 236 mph in the clouds, but I have never heard of more than 155 mph on the ground. Still that should have rated Isabel a 7 or and 8 or something. So if we were to define a Category 6, what would its wind speeds be?

To find out what a Category 6 hurricane's wind speed should be, I did an exponential least squares fit on the Saffir Simpson scale and found this formula:

Level = 69.958 * 10^1.1969,

Or if you round off, it is quite close to

Level = 70 * 10^1.2

The idea is that a storm is, say a Category 3 hurricane if its level is between 2.5 and 3.5. I get from this hurricane levels beyond 5, but also four Tropical Storm levels, plus three other classifications of weak systems. From this formula, I get these limits for the categories of storms. I chose an exponential least squares fit, because that seems to fit the data better, and it seems to me that damage is proportional to the logarithm of the wind speed.

Level From To(mph) Description
-inf- -6 0 25 Pile of rain showers
-5 26 30 Weak System
-4 31 36 Moderate System
-3 37 43 Category 1 Tropical Storm
-2 44 52 Category 2 Tropical Storm
-1 53 62 Category 3 Tropical Storm
0 63 75 Category 4 Tropical Storm
1 76 90 Category 1 Hurricane
2 91 108 Category 2 Hurricane
3 109 130 Category 3 Hurricane
4 131 156 Category 4 Hurricane
5 157 187 Category 5 Hurricane
6 188 224 Category 6 Hurricane
7 225 268 Category 7 Hurricane
8 269 321 Category 8 Hurricane
9 322 NoLimit Inconceivable Hurricane

Since no tornado has ever been found with winds exceeding 321 mph, I just simply sum up Category 9, or Category 9+, as "Inconceivable Hurricane"; if you want to, you could use the formula to describe Category 10, 11, and so forth, maybe for measuring wind speeds in Jupiter's Great Spot.

If these storms are in the Eastern North Pacific, substitute "Typhoon" for "Hurricane". If they are elsewhere other than the Atlantic or North Pacific, substitute "Cyclone" for "Hurricane".

So therefore a Category 6 Hurricane has wind speeds from 188-224 mph. Hope we never get one of these hitting a city - might as well put the city in a blender and turn it to "high".