{"id":221009,"date":"2025-08-27T00:05:22","date_gmt":"2025-08-27T05:05:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/08\/wind-isnt-the-only-threat-scientists-urge-shift-to-more-informed-hurricane-scale"},"modified":"2025-08-27T00:05:22","modified_gmt":"2025-08-27T05:05:22","slug":"wind-isnt-the-only-threat-scientists-urge-shift-to-more-informed-hurricane-scale","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/08\/wind-isnt-the-only-threat-scientists-urge-shift-to-more-informed-hurricane-scale","title":{"rendered":"Wind isn\u2019t the only threat: Scientists urge shift to more informed hurricane scale"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/wind-isnt-the-only-threat-scientists-urge-shift-to-more-informed-hurricane-scale.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Wind alone does not account for all hurricane-related fatalities. Storm surge and rainfall do as well. Yet the current warning system\u2014the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale\u2014measures a storm\u2019s strength solely by wind speed.<\/p>\n<p>A new research paper <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/s41598-025-14170-1\" target=\"_blank\">published<\/a> in <i>Nature <i>Scientific Reports<\/i><\/i> and co-authored by Jennifer Collins, a hurricane researcher and University of South Florida geosciences professor, argues that in order to keep people safe, it\u2019s time for a change. The authors propose replacing the SSHWS with the Tropical Cyclone Severity Scale, which incorporates <a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/tags\/storm+surge\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">storm surge<\/a> and rainfall in addition to wind.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cFrequently, people use the storm\u2019s category to decide whether to evacuate,\u201d Collins said. \u201cThat\u2019s incredibly dangerous because if they hear it\u2019s only a <a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/tags\/tropical+storm\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">tropical storm<\/a> or Category 1, too often no alarm bells go off, and they see no cause for concern.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Wind alone does not account for all hurricane-related fatalities. Storm surge and rainfall do as well. Yet the current warning system\u2014the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale\u2014measures a storm\u2019s strength solely by wind speed. A new research paper published in Nature Scientific Reports and co-authored by Jennifer Collins, a hurricane researcher and University of South Florida geosciences [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":732,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[493],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-221009","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-climatology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/221009","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/732"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=221009"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/221009\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=221009"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=221009"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=221009"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}