Hurricane Melissa has often been described as a “monster hurricane.” In terms of intensity, that characterization is certainly accurate. However, when discussing a storm’s magnitude, it is important to distinguish between intensity and size.

Record-breaking Hurricane Melissa has renewed calls to amend the scale used to classify the strength of a hurricane and estimate the potential damage it could inflict when it makes landfall. Some scientists say the over-50-year-old Saffir-Simpson scale might not adequately convey the danger of high-end storms.

As global temperatures continue to increase, making storms more intense, some researchers say that the Saffir-Simpson scale, which measures a hurricane's wind speeds, doesn't adequately address the hazards associated with extreme storms. In a new study ...

TOLEDO, Ohio — Every summer, hurricane season rolls in with a swirl of names, warnings, and numbers. But what do those category numbers — 1 through 5 — actually mean? The Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale is used to rank hurricanes based on their ...

NORFOLK, Va. — The Saffir-Simpson Scale. You've heard of it, you've even used it to talk about hurricanes with your friends and family. But how much do you really know about it? Each time you hear a meteorologist talk about a hurricane by category, it is ...

Amid warming oceans and increasing rapid intensification of tropical cyclones, a new study suggests expanding the hurricane wind scale to include a Category 6 with winds over 192 mph. Climate researchers published a study in the Proceedings of the National ...

A University of South Florida researcher and a team from the Netherlands are proposing a new way to measure hurricane severity. Jennifer Collins had been studying evacuation patterns when she saw people would not leave high-risk areas unless the storm was ...

Tropical Storm Melissa is expected to bring lots of rain to the Dominican Republic, Haiti and Jamaica but its path beyond that isn't clear, the National Hurricane Center says.

The intensity of a hurricane is measured by its maximum sustained wind speed, and when that speed increases by at least 35 miles per hour in a 24-hour period — or roughly two categories on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Scale — meteorologists call that “rapid intensification.”