The world has never seen a Category 6 hurricane. But the day may be coming.

[Zorro]

As a ferocious hurricane bears down on South Florida, water managers desperately lower canals in anticipation of 4 feet of rain.

Everyone east of Dixie Highway is ordered evacuated, for fear of a menacing storm surge. Forecasters debate whether the storm will generate the 200 mph winds to achieve Category 6 status.

This is one scenario for hurricanes in a warmer world, a subject of fiendish complexity and considerable scientific research, as experts try to tease out the effects of climate change from the influences of natural climate cycles.

Some changes — such as the slowing of hurricanes’ forward motion and the worsening of storm surges from rising sea levels — are happening now. Other impacts, such as their increase in strength, may have already begun but are difficult to detect, considering all of the other climate forces at work.

http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/florida/fl-reg-hurricanes-climate-20180703-story.html

[malaise]

1. Get thee to,the greatest page for visibility

Rec

[groundloop]

2. The world has never seen a Cat. 6 hurricane because that rating is undefined

[stevenleser]

3. My response was going to be something similar but the article covers the fact that

Categories above 5 do not currently exist but that categories 6 and perhaps 7 may need to be created to describe hurricanes in excess of 200 and perhaps even above 225-230mph sustained winds before long.

[lambchopp59]

4. It may not be wind speed that define the category 6 and beyond

but the sheer resilience, continued gale force winds over extended time and massive flooding and devastation never before seen. There may be entire areas of this continent rendered uninhabitable that will make the dust bowl seem like a minor problem if corporate dipshits don't reverse the Pruittesque policies that have turned the EPA into the Environmental Destruction Agency.
It's coming to a coast east and south of you.

[stevenleser]

6. Perhaps starting to come to the West coast too!

Funny story. I was transferred to the LA Office of PWC (Then just PW) back in 1997 to become IT Manager for the LA office. A Hurricane was coming up from just south of the baja area and the trajectory looked like it was heading toward the orange county LA area. I started calling up my staff and asking if they were prepared and they just laughed. It's not possible for the LA or Orange county areas of California to get a hurricane. The water is never warm enough.

Sure enough, the system headed in the direction of LA, but completely petered out from the cold water temperatures before it got there.

But if water temperatures increased by 5-10 degrees? The LA Basin might see its first tropical cyclones.

On Edit: Found it, it was Hurricane Linda in 1997 https://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/earth20121017a.html

[bucolic_frolic]

5. Four feet is a lot of weight

a maelstrom for Mar-a-Lago?