Jeff Masters: Hurricane Patricia's 215 mph Winds: A Warning Shot Across Our Bow

[phantom power]

The rest of the article is a run-down of Patricia storm statistics. Basically, everything about that storm was record breaking.

Consider, now, if the bad intensity forecasts for Hurricane Patricia had been made for a Hurricane Patricia clone that had ended up making landfall in a heavily populated area such as Miami, Galveston/Houston, Tampa, or New Orleans, but without the hurricane weakening dramatically at landfall. A 15-mile diameter area of 215 mph winds--EF5 tornado speeds--would have caused near-total destruction. Since the storm would have been significantly under-warned for, a full evacuation might not have been completed, resulting in one of the deadliest hurricane tragedies in human history. The ten-year drought in major hurricane landfalls in the U.S. is going to end someday, and an onslaught of major hurricanes like we experienced in 2004 - 2005--seven landfalls by major hurricanes in two years--could happen again. As I discussed in my 2013 post, Hurricanes and Climate Change: Huge Dangers, Huge Unknowns, the consensus among hurricane experts is that climate change is likely to bring an increase in the number of high-end hurricanes like Patricia. Now that ocean temperatures are considerably warmer than they were a few decades ago, the maximum potential intensity a hurricane can reach is higher, and we should expect to see a few Patricias sprinkled among the inevitable phalanxes of major hurricanes that will assault our shores in the coming decades.

http://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/hurricane-patricias-215-mph-winds-a-warning-shot-across-our-bow