Rohini Shivamoggi

Saturday, April 27, 2024

Where Categorizing Hurricanes Falls Short

December 12, 2020December 12, 2020 Rohini Shivamoggi 0 Comments flooding, hurricanes, sand dunes, storm surge

Hurricane Katrina was one of the most devastating hurricanes in history, leading to over 1800 fatalities and tying Hurricane Harvey as the costliest hurricane on record. But at the time Katrina made landfall, it was “only” ranked as Category 3 by the Saffir-Simpson scale, which goes up to Category 5. So why did Katrina, at only Category 3, cause so much more destruction than most Category 5 storms? And what does that tell us about what the Saffir-Simpson scale is missing?

Climate

Climate Change is Increasing the Likelihood of Worst-Case Scenarios

October 9, 2020October 9, 2020 Rohini Shivamoggi 0 Comments climatechange, hurricanes

If you were following coverage of Hurricane Delta this week, you might’ve noticed that it seemed to come out of nowhere — one day we were all talking about Tropical Storm Gamma, and then seemingly overnight the conversation shifted to sounding alarms over Hurricane Delta. This phenomenon, in which a hurricane goes from nobody to nightmare in under a day, is known as rapid intensification. The one-two punch of rapid intensificaton being both deadly and difficult to predict has made it an urgent problem for forecasters as we all try to adjust to our changing climate.

Climate