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Comment by pockybum522 | Hacker News Reader

Why does category 5 hurricane not also constitute a category 2 hurricane. Seems silly to differentiate by what level they end up at when a cat 5 has also, by definition, made it to cat 2 at some point.

Other than that, this is fun.

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I think it makes sense to differentiate them, just as you would differentiate them if it was displayed as a graph of "number of hurricanes by category". If you only include the highest category, you miss out on data that might also be useful, for instance whether there have been more category 1 hurricanes compared to category 5.

If it didn't differentiate them and the last category 5 hurricane was 110 days ago but the last category 1 hurricane was 2 days ago, how would you learn about the category 1 hurricane? In your example it would just show hurricane categories 1-5 sequentially all bunched together, so you'd also be duplicating data which wouldn't be that useful.

Implicitly what it’s saying is: “Hurricane reaching a maximum category of X”

That was my assumption, too, but the website shows 110 days since the last cat 5 but 114 days since the last cat 2, and they're not the same event.

More than that: the last cat 5 is "Otis" while the last cat 2 is "Tammy". AFAIK they are named in alphabetical order?

Something seems fishy in this dataset.

I mean, you can ask the meteorologists about the process of naming, but those hurricanes actually existed, on the dates suggested, so I'm not sure what's "fishy" about it.

Hurricane Tammy, Cat 2, October 18, 2023: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_Tammy

Hurricane Otis, Cat 5, October 22, 2023: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_Otis

I believe that the naming relates to which ocean they're forming in, but it's probably good for you to do your own research, so you can clear up any "fishiness" yourself.

I think the poster is suggesting that the Cat 5 should also count as a Cat 2 as Cat 5 is stronger than Cat 2.

There are several region dependent different name lists, just have a look at https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tropical_cyclone_naming

The purpose of this hurricane rating scale is to "provide some indication of the potential damage and flooding a hurricane will cause upon landfall." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saffir%E2%80%93Simpson_scale

Came here to ask the same thing. I always assumed a higher class necessarily was a lower class before. Curious.

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