The Cuboidal Hurricane Wind Scale

C. van Gog, 01 October 2022

Hurricane Isabel (2003) as seen from the ISS

Note: I’m using my metric prefixes. Also, this is not a serious post. :)

The Saffir–Simpson scale is fine… but quite arbitrary. So let me introduce the cuboidal hurricane wind scale (CHWS). Like Saffir-Simpson, CHWS uses the maximum 1-minute sustained wind speed $W$. Since I like SI units, $W$ is expressed in m/s.

Now, let $W = w$ for some hurricane. Then this hurricane belongs to category $C = ⌊w/10⌋ - 2$. This is roughly equal to Saffir-Simpson, with tropical storms having roughly $C = 0$ and tropical depressions $C = -1$ or even $C = -2$ for $W$ below 10 m/s. Now let’s see which categories we find on other planets! All of these are known maxima.

Mars: $C = 1$
Venus: $C = 6$
Earth: $C = 8$
Uranus: $C = 23$ (!)
Jupiter: $C = 38$ (!!)
Saturn: $C = 48$ (!!!)
Neptune: $C = 51$ (!!!)