Hurricane Erin is heading away from the United States, but heavy seas, crushing surf and strong rip currents will pose ...

Although the storm is expected to stay offshore, it will produce dangerous surf conditions for much of the Atlantic Coast ...

Hurricane Erin moves offshore but still threatens East Coast with dangerous surf, rip currents, and tropical winds. This live ...

Hurricane Erin raced from a Category 1 to a Category 5 storm. If Erin keeps ramping up, is there a Category 6?

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

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.

A major hurricane is classified as a Category 3 or higher on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale. This means the storm has sustained winds of 111 miles per hour or greater.

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.

Some fluctuations in intensity are expected over the next couple of days due to inner-core structural changes.

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 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.

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.