If the SSS needs to be extended for SCIENTIFICALLY SOUND reasons at the top-end, then … do it. A Gilbert or Hiayan rotating so compactly to achieve 180+ knot sustained wind velocities is a MONSTER, and should have its own special, astounding designation. OMG! OMG! A once-a-decade Category 6! Etc.

Because whether one’s a GWA (global warming activist) or a denialist, or something between, it seems like fairly good proxy-science to start counting … the monsters. After all, if the scientists are to be believed (which they should!) then there’s outstanding predictions of MORE and MORE FIERCE hurricanes as AGW inexorably progresses. So, let’s count ’em, and show everyone that yes, they are matching or exceeding predictions! And newscasters will love the new category, even if the monsters don’t show up at rates higher than historical.

Win, win, win.

Cat 1: 74-95
Cat 2: 96-110
Cat 3: 111-130
Cat 4: 131-155
Cat 5: 156+

Going by that pattern, maybe Cat 5 should be 156-180, and 181+ could be Cat 6.

There have been a few storms in the past century that qualify as a Cat 6 according to what I just typed: Haiyan and Camille, and I also believe Gilbert?

Rare, but it can happen.

It basically amounts to, “nobody can get to you to help you during the event and we probably won’t be able to get to you after the event for a good while, maybe a long while.” Once it gets close you won’t be able to get out. Don’t wait. Get out before you can’t get out. When you see the flames or see the wind or the water is rising or the debris is flying, it’s already too late. That really applies to Category 5, but the big issue for these bigger storms – is that they’re bigger. They cover more area and any individual person or household is that much less likely to get any assistance they need in the aftermath.

Some marketing person could turn the various concepts into something that might stick once the measurement or implications have been worked out.

But scientifically, the existing scale is nothing more than a “hi, medium, low” setting on a piece of equipment. It would seem to me that the best measurement would be to calculate the total energy of the storm and then express that in terms of area.

I’d be curious to see the total energy of all storms of any given period of time then compared to average land and ocean temperatures over that same period. Perhaps, more accurately, only the average temperatures over land and ocean where a tropical storm has formed and traveled over…

Force 0 Smoke rises vertically , sea a mirror for miles around. Hand helmsman full bottle of Demerara rum

Force 1 Sails slack, sea surface barely undulates
Give helmsman second bottle of Barbados rum

Force 2 Sails begin to fill, ripples appear astern

Offer helmsman a lime to put in second bottle of rum.

Force 3 Bow wave appears, slack lines tighten
Place cup of ice at helmsman’s disposal

Force 4 Whitecaps appear, winch handle needed to trim sail
Start adding cola to helmsman’s rum.

Force 5 Whitecaps begin to shed spray and salt water ruins helmsman’s Cuba Libre

Force 6 Waves lengthen, helmsman requests beer

Force 7 Helmsman relieved after mistaking streaks of blowing foam for head on navigator’s beer

Force 8 Waves heighten and new helmsman switches to shandy

Force 9 Overhanging crests appear on waves, new helmsman switches to ice tea

Force 10 Breaking waves interfere with steering. Helmsman requests black coffee

Force 11 Violently agitated sea surface disappears beneath
blowing foam, hand helmsman irish coffee after he agrees to set storm trysail

Force 12 . Hurricane. Bow invisible from stern. Give all hands bottles of Demerara rum.

Force 13 Existential Threat.
St. Elmo’s fire ignites emergency cask of iron jack stored in bilge.

Thank you the feedback.

However, when you wrote:

“The model that does the best job of predicting the frequency of tropical storms over recent decades, and also predicted this year’s North Atlantic season to reasonable accuracy,”

You inferred the model had been accurate to date.

It maters little what that climate model says when the the theory of increased strength and frequency has not occurred during the past decades of increased CO2 emissions.

There are no real world indications at all that extreme weather is increasing. Let alone due to AGW.

Yet you are still advising that it is. Why?

But the models are about the future. You see, that is the stuff that has not happened yet. It is therefore not possible to provide evidence of something that has already happened if the thing hasn’t happened yet, because we expect it to happen in the future. Unfortunately, Dr. Who and those other time travel stories are fiction!