Here’s a troubling phrase hurricane forecasters hate but often hear: “It’s just a Category 1. Nothing to worry about.” Or even worse: “Tropical storm? Just some wind and rain.
” But look at , which hit Texas this week as a “mere” Category 1 storm — far weaker in wind strength than when it swept through the Caribbean as a Cat 5 just days earlier — yet still knocked out power to 2.7 million customers. The storm has been blamed for eight deaths in the U.
S. Beryl is not the only example. By the numbers, Tropical Storm Fay in 2008 didn’t even register on the scale of dangerous storms before it made four separate landfalls in Florida.
In this case, it was not Fay’s strength, but its speed — or lack thereof — that turned out to be the key. The listless storm parked itself over the state for days, dumping as much as 25 inches (64 centimeters) of rain in some places. Floods killed crops and destroyed homes.
Roads were so flooded that alligators swam alongside first responders as they rescued people stranded in their homes. What’s in a number? The — which measures the strength of a hurricane’s winds on a scale of Category 1 to Category 5, with 5 being the strongest — was introduced to the public in 1973, the year that gas prices spiked from 39 cents to 55 cents a gallon and Tony Orlando and Dawn had the #1 hit of the year with “Tie a Yellow Ribbon Round the Ole Oak Tree.” In other words, times have changed, and so should the way people think about.