The longstanding hurricane rating system, the Saffir-Simpson Scale, only takes into account sustained wind speeds and not the full devastating impact of a hurricane.

If a storm is a Category 3, 4 or 5, it is deemed a "major" hurricane due to the potential for "significant loss of life and damage," the National Hurricane Center says. Hurricanes that fall into categories 1 or 2 are still considered dangerous, the center says.

Let's break it down. Big Picture -What It Measures: As the name implies, the current version is strictly a wind scale that rates a hurricane's sustained winds (not gusts) from Category 1 through 5.

At that point, the NHC uses the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Scale of intensity to categorize it on a scale of 1-5.

The Saffir-Simpson Scale rates hurricanes on winds. The new proposed scale being devloped by Jennifer Collins. professor in the School of Geosciences at the University of South Florida includes ...

Klotzbach presented on Tuesday at the National Hurricane Conference where he said pressure correlates better with hurricane damage than wind – which is what the Saffir-Simpson Scale identifies.

Following a hurricane at a CATEGORY 4, most of an area will be “uninhabitable” for anywhere between weeks or months. CATEGORY 5: This is the highest category on the Saffir-Simpson wind scale.

The Saffir-Simpson scale of a hurricane's intensity is used to estimate potential property damage and coastal flooding caused by storm surge. The scale is determined by wind speed. Storm surge

"The Saffir-Simpson scale is a measure of wind speed. But far more people die from hurricane flooding than from strong winds. Hurricane Florence made landfall near Wilmington as a Category 1 storm.

Hurricane Erin reached the maximum intensity on the Saffir-Simpson scale last Saturday (16), becoming a category 5 storm with winds of up to 260 km/h (161 mph).