--- title: Hurricane Florence Exposes Flaws in Category System description: Hurricane Florence was technically downgraded before it made landfall, but it's still a life-threatening hurricane. canonical: https://time.com/5395912/hurricane-florence-category/ author: Alejandro de la Garza article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2018-09-14T16:56:05.000Z article:modified_time: 2023-12-12T17:37:58.000Z article:section: Science og:title: Hurricane Florence Is Exposing Major Problems With How We Categorize Storms og:description: Florence was technically downgraded, but it's still a life-threatening hurricane og:url: https://time.com/5395912/hurricane-florence-category/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltc9f2c614fd89acdd/69893a45e76ad24e99632fec/hurricane-florence-scale.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 3000 og:image:height: 1688 og:image:alt: Hurricane Florence Category Scale og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Hurricane Florence Is Exposing Major Problems With How We Categorize Storms twitter:description: Florence was technically downgraded, but it's still a life-threatening hurricane twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltc9f2c614fd89acdd/69893a45e76ad24e99632fec/hurricane-florence-scale.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Hurricane Florence Is Exposing Major Problems With How We Categorize Storms > Sponsored content. 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Carolinas, Virginia, Maryland, and DC are in a state of emergency as Hurricane Florence approaches._  by [Alejandro de la Garza](https://time.com/author/alejandro-de-la-garza/)  ## Alejandro de la Garza Updated: Dec 12, 2023 5:37 PM UTCPublished: Sep 14, 2018 4:56 PM UTC Carolinas, Virginia, Maryland, and DC are in a state of emergency as Hurricane Florence approaches.  by [Alejandro de la Garza](https://time.com/author/alejandro-de-la-garza/)  ## Alejandro de la Garza Updated: Dec 12, 2023 5:37 PM UTCPublished: Sep 14, 2018 4:56 PM UTC [Hurricane Florence](http://time.com/5392883/why-hurricane-florence-so-dangerous/), once a Category 4 storm, was downgraded to Category 1 before it made landfall near Wrightsville Beach, North Carolina early Friday morning. But experts say that despite the apparent demotion, Hurricane Florence still stands to be a destructive and deadly storm for those in its path. “Just because the wind speeds came down … please do not let your guard down,” Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) Administrator Brock Long said at a press conference Thursday, during which he highlighted dangers like flooding from storm surge. “This is a very dangerous storm. Storm surge is why many of you have been placed under evacuation and we are asking citizens to please heed a warning. Your time is running out.” Indeed, Hurricane Florence’s rapid downgrade from a Category 4 to a Category 1 underscores a potential public safety issue with the way hurricanes are measured and discussed. Hurricanes are categorized using what’s called the [Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale](http://time.com/4946730/hurricane-categories/), which takes only a single measurement into account: the speed of a hurricane’s sustained winds. A hurricane is considered Category 1 if it has sustained wind speeds of 74 miles per hour (mph) to 95 mph, Category 2 with speeds between 96 mph and 110 mph, and so on. But hurricanes like Florence bring dangers beyond high winds, most notably storm surge and flash flooding. “Florence is an excellent example of a storm that is a lower category than it was and yet is still extremely dangerous,” said Dr. Bill Lapenta**,** director of the National Centers for Environmental Prediction at the National Weather Service, in an interview Thursday. “It was a Category 4 \[Wednesday\] and since then it’s a Category 2, which simply means its sustained winds have decreased. But when you look at the magnitude of the dangers that have been predicted, that hasn’t changed.” In the case of Hurricane Florence, one specific shortfall with the Saffir-Simpson scale is quickly becoming apparent: While it measures the wind speeds a hurricane is producing, it doesn’t take into account the speed at which a hurricane itself is moving. Those are often vastly different figures — while hurricanes can produce wind speeds of up to 150 mph and more (the average speed of an Indianapolis 500 race car), the storms themselves tend to prod along at speeds as slow as 5 or 10 mph, especially as they begin to hit land. A hurricane’s speed can determine how dangerous they are, as slower storms can dump biblical amounts of rain and create other hazards in a more limited area over longer periods of time. That, in turn, [increases the risk for those](http://time.com/5394827/hurricane-florence-north-carolina-preparation/) in a hurricane’s path. “As Florence approaches the southeast coast, it might be moving only 4 miles per hour, which is the speed I walk,” said Lapenta. “That results in people being exposed to hurricane-force winds much longer than they would otherwise have been, and that in turn effects inland flooding.” Other threats, like storm surge, aren’t measured or predicted by a given hurricane’s category either. Any shortcomings with the Saffir-Simpson scale can have life and death consequences. Hurricane categories have become a convenient shorthand for residents, officials and the media looking to understand and convey the threat a storm presents. But a hurricane’s category alone often fails to adequately communicate that threat. That means people may be making ill-informed decisions about whether to evacuate their homes or ride out a hurricane and risk their lives in the process. And when hurricanes get downgraded right before making landfall, some people may wrongly interpret that as a sign of a lessened threat. “We really have to think about the different types of ways of explaining the risks,” says Dr. Tricia Wachtendorf, a sociology professor and the associate director of the Disaster Research Center at the University of Delaware. Part of the solution, she says, lies in presenting residents with a more detailed, multifaceted picture of the storm that they are about to face. “Having a classification system or a cone of uncertainty is one approach, but that has to be balanced with other information as well,” she says. Many meteorologists, officials and others have taken that advice to heart, especially after devastating storms like Hurricane Katrina, Hurricane Harvey, and Hurricane Maria. In the lead-up to Hurricane Florence, newscasters and political leaders pounded home the idea that, even if Hurricane Florence gets downgraded, it’s still expected to be a disastrous event. Meanwhile, the National Weather Service is working on other ways to communicate a hurricane’s threat. One product, for instance, aims to predict where flash flooding may occur up to three days in advance, Lapenta says. The task facing forecasters and officials will continue to be providing residents with enough, but not too much, information leading up to a hurricane. “Part of the challenge is \[balancing\] the simplicity of the information when you talk about a category — and that can be really useful as you’re trying to convey information that’s as simple as possible — with the nuances and details that might be provided.” said Dr. Wachtendorf. In the case of Hurricane Florence, the warnings have certainly been straightforward. “My message is clear,” said North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper at a press briefing Wednesday. “Disaster is at the doorstep and it’s coming in.” _— With reporting from Jeffrey Kluger_ **Correction, Sept. 14** The original version of this story misstated Dr. Tricia Wachtendorf’s position. She is the director of the Disaster Research Center, not the associate director. ## Transcript [ MUSIC ] After a mostly quiet summer, for the first time since 2013 no hurricanes formed in August in the Atlantic Basin. The second week of September marks a frenzy of activity for the 2018 Atlantic Hurricane season. Hurricane Florence, a category four storm with a hundred and forty miles per hour winds, is expected to hit landfall in the coast of North and South Carolina on Friday, September fourteenth. States of emergency have been declared across South Carolina, North Carolina, and Virginia, Washington, D. C. and Maryland, with sixteen hundred in National Guard troops deployed to support the affected areas. And 1. 7 million people have been ordered to evacuate from the coast. North Carolina governor, Roy Cooper, shared with reporters, this storm is a monster. It's big and it's vicious. It's an extremely dangerous, life- threatening, historic hurricane. Well Hurricane Florence is so unusual because it's very rare of a storm of this particular magnitude to strike anywhere on the East Coast north of Florida. These states haven't seen a storm this strong in maybe 60 years. North Caronlina has been hit by only one other category 4 storm since recordkeeping began in the 1850's That was hurricane Hazel in 1954. Now Florence is on track to be one of the biggest hurricanes in U. S. history with winds expected to accelerate to 155 mph. and produce a storm surge of up to 15 or 20 feet. Addressing governments for Florence, president Trump said this. We are sparing no expense We are totally prepared, we're ready. We're as ready as anybody has ever been. But as two storms further out in the Atlantic, Helene and Isaac, gain strength, these threats are particularly unsettling because the US is still reckoning with the full impact of 2017's brutal hurricane season. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration estimates that the three category four storms, Harvey, Irma, and Maria that hit the country in 2017 caused over $ 300 billion in damages. So are these costly disasters the new normal? It does, but not just because storms just happen to be hitting more expensive areas or wealthier areas. It's because people keep building in hurricane- prone areas. So there's more property for these storms to damage and destroy when they do arrive Unlike hurricane Harvey which stalled over Texas in 2017 and with the biggest rainfall event to ever hit the US Florence could linger over the East coast for several days unloading 15 to 20 inches of rain Our hurricane winds are a big deal if storm surge arise in sea levels caused by storm winds and rainfall that are responsible for 76 % of all direct hurricane deaths. What US cities have learned some lessons since hurricane Katrina. Cities have begun to build theiror at least research various ways to mitigate flooding and mitigate storm surge. Whether that's dams or levees or other technologies that can be installed to prevent catastrophic flooding. As the baseline for hurricanes to grow more intense, hurricane forecasting emerges as a critical tool. And while the European forecasting model may have greater resources and technology than it's American counterparts That said, no one model is 100 percent accurate all of the time. 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