Hurricane Milton approached its maximum known storm strength limit Monday night, with wind gusts exceeding 200 mph at one point.
The sheer force of the second-strongest storm ever recorded in the Gulf of Mexico has prompted calls for a new Category 6 designation.
“This was nothing short of astronomical,” Florida meteorologist Noah Berggren said, as Milton reached sustained winds of 180 mph and “gusts over 200 mph.”
“There are no meteorological words to describe the small size and intensity of this storm,” he marveled.
“This hurricane approaches the mathematical limits of what Earth’s atmosphere above ocean water can produce.”
Milton was downgraded to a Category 4 storm on Tuesday after forming as a Category 5 storm and hitting Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula. By Tuesday night, it had returned to Category 5 status and was circling toward Florida’s Gulf Coast, putting millions of lives at risk.
After forming in the Gulf of Mexico, Milton rapidly accelerated from a 60 mph tropical storm Sunday morning to a deadly Category 5 hurricane with sustained winds of 180 mph by Monday, lasting just 36 hours. showed incredible power.
If the hurricane’s wind speeds had reached 192 miles per hour, it would have exceeded a rare mark reached by only five storms since 1980, USA Today reported.
Its extraordinary strength has led some meteorologists to call for the Saffir-Simpson hurricane anemometer to be expanded to include a new Category 6 for hurricanes.
Although no such official category exists, Professor Michael E. Mann tweeted, “Milton may have actually broken the ‘Cat 6’ cutoff of 192 mph.”
Michael Wenner, a climate scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and Jim Kossin, a former federal scientist and science advisor at the nonprofit First Street Foundation, are conducting research to explore whether a new category of hurricanes should be created. Co-authored and published earlier this year. .
“We found that many recent storms have already reached this hypothetical Category 6 intensity, and based on multiple independent lines of evidence examining simulated maximum wind speeds and potential peak wind speeds, “As the climate continues to warm, more such storms are expected to occur,” they said. I wrote.
But Fox Weather meteorologist Mike Rollins told the Post on Tuesday that the new category was “unnecessary” and that the Saffir-Simpson scale remains the gold standard for measuring hurricanes. .
Follow The Post’s latest coverage of Hurricane Milton.
“In the meteorological field, there is a push to abolish scales and create new ways to measure storm strength, as storm surges and flash floods often cause more damage than wind alone. “I’m not aware of any work being done,” he said.
The late Robert Simpson, co-creator of the Saffir-Simpson Wind Meter, said in 1999 that a Category 6 hurricane would be “unimportant” because Category 5 storms had already caused significant damage to people and buildings. No,” he said.
Milton is the fourth strongest recorded Atlantic hurricane in barometric pressure (a measure of storm strength), with a central pressure of 897 millibars.
According to the Miami Herald, there are only five hurricanes in official records dating back more than 170 years that have fallen below 900.
