Hurricane bumped up to a Category 5
2nd look shows Michael’s destruction
Monster Hurricane Michael, which decimated the Florida panhandle in October, is now rated at the top of the scale for classifying these destructive storms.
The National Hurricane Center announced Friday that it had reclassified Michael as a Category 5, up from a Category 4, when it made landfall near Mexico Beach, Fla.
The storm roared ashore on the afternoon of Oct. 10, near Mexico Beach and Tyndall Air Force Base, with winds of 160 mph, the hurricane center determined. Category 5, the strongest on the 1 to 5 Saffir-Simpson scale, begins at 157 mph. Its winds were previously estimated at 155 mph, a highend Category 4.
Michael thus becomes the first storm to make landfall as a Category 5 in the United States since Andrew struck southern Florida in August 1992. Andrew also was upgraded from a Category 4 to a 5 in post-storm analysis. Michael was blamed for 49 deaths and more than $5.5 billion in damage.
The upgrade comes after the National Hurricane Center sifted and reanalyzed reams of data. It examined “aircraft winds, surface winds, surface pressures, satellite intensity estimates, and Doppler radar velocities — including data and analyses that were not available in real time,” the center’s poststorm analysis reported.
The change from a highend Category 4 to a low-end Category 5 is small from a practical standpoint, just a 6 mph increase in wind from the initial estimate, but it does solidify Hurricane Michael’s place among powerful storms that have made landfall in the United States.
The hurricane center notes that Michael now ranks as the fourth-strongest hurricane on record to make landfall in the United States, trailing only the Labor Day Hurricane of 1935, Hurricane Camille in 1969 and Hurricane Andrew in 1992.
It also becomes the third hurricane to strike Florida as a Category 5, and its October landfall made it the latest a storm this strong has ever struck U.S. shores.
In its reanalysis of the storm, the hurricane center notes its intensity has an uncertainty margin of 10 percent, leaving open the possibility for additional modifications to Michael’s statistics in the future.
While Michael’s Category 5 winds were confined to a relatively small area near its center, its damage was rather extensive, resembling the destruction of a super-wide tornado. In addition to packing 160 mph winds, the storm pushed a 16-foot surge of ocean water onto the coastline and was strengthening right up until the moment its center intercepted land.