Interesting!
A category 1 hurricane has max sustained winds of 95 mph.
A category 2 hurricane has max sustained winds of 110 mph.
Francine, as close as I was able to find out, had max sustained winds of "around 100 mph" (Washington Post, 9/11/24)
That means that this entire rancorous debate is over A WIND SPEED OF APPROXIMATELY 5 MPH!!
The real issue here, IMO, is something we've seen much of before: a sense of disappointment that whatever hurricane under discussion wasn't stronger that it turned out to be. We've been hearing now for nearly two decades that global warming was going to increase not only the number of hurricanes per season but their intensity as well. That disappointment is evidenced by the repeated proclivity of media to magnify events associated with hurricanes: if the numbers of hurricanes aren't there, it seems that the power of the ones that ARE occurring are maximized in media to the fullest possible extent.
Are there people who would be a lot happier today, if Francine HAD been a category 5?
Unfortunately, I think so.
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