Hurricane scale is called misleading

Hurricane Katrina, the costliest natural disaster in the nation's history, has ignited a lively debate among meteorologists and other weather watchers: Should the well-known hurricane ranking scale be revised? After all, while Katrina packed a fiercely destructive storm surge, its winds ranked it as a Category 3 storm, according to the Saffir-Simpson scale's criteria. That's still a major hurricane, but two steps away from the scale's highest ranking and in a category that is not uncommon.

from the Times Picayune