Hurricane classifications

Milton is still expected to decrease through the rest of its lifecycle, likely being a category 3 by the time it makes landfall in Florida, but what do these categories mean? Well, they are part of the Saffir-Simpson scale, developed in the 70s to determine hurricane strength by maximum sustained wind speeds. Category 1 is 74-95 mph, Cat. 2 is 96-110 mph, Cat. 3 is 111-129 mph, Cat. 4 is 130-156 mph, and Cat. 5 is anything above 157 mph. There have been 10 hurricanes in the past 10 years that have reached category five status, including Beryl and Milton. Of the others, 6 of the 8’s names have been retired, likely something that will happen with Beryl and Helene.

The World Meteorological Organization has a strict procedure to naming tropical systems and uses lists of names that get rotated every six years, the names on the list for this year will also be used in the 2030 season. Hurricanes used to be identified by location, where or when they made landfall, but a naming system started in the mid 1900s In 1953, the National Hurricane Center started issuing a list of names listed alphabetically, expanding it in 1979 to include male names and start the alternating process of names. Names are chosen to be short in length, easy to pronounce, significant in many languages and not used in other regions where tropical storms happen. The Atlantic basin list will be different from the pacific basin list. Again, these lists rotate every six years, so we won’t be seeing these names for a while after the season ends, but some of these names will likely be retired after this year. If I had to guess, Beryl and Helene will likely be struck from the list, and Milton has a good chance as well, not only due to potential damage but also to the rapid intensification of the storm. Milton itself is a replacement from a retired name, another category five Micheal back in 2018.