Are hurricanes worsening?
Last year brought a trio of devastating Category 4 and 5 hurricanes: Harvey dumped a record-breaking 27 trillion gallons of rain on Texas; Irma was the most intense storm to hit the continental U.S. since Katrina; and Maria’s winds reached 175 mph, flattening much of the Caribbean and knocking out Puerto Rico’s entire power grid. Those storms killed thousands and did hundreds of billions of dollars in damage. They were very unusual in how quickly they intensified, how slowly they moved after making landfall, and how much rainfall they produced. Continuing that trend, Hurricane Florence exploded from Category 1 to 4 in barely 24 hours, traveling an astonishing 350-plus miles each day before slowing to an ominous crawl as it neared the Carolinas. The intensity of storms is growing so markedly that meteorologists have considered adding a Category 6 label in anticipation of future epic storms.