Reply #21: I beleve...

[Realityhack]

it has to do with the fact that they want to be acurate in terms of the scale they are using. They do not claim that the 'catagory' is the sole determining factor in damage or anything like it. As another poster mentioned some scientists/meteoroligists want a new system of catagorization. But scientists being scientists they have a pesky desire to know the facts of a situation. If it was catagory 3 at landfal it was catagory 3... damage does not enter the equasion... only wind speed.

This gives them acurate data points to work with. They can say gee... a catagory 4 or 5 that downs all the way to a 3 can do all this damage... What other traits did it have?
That leads to new ways to measure the damage potential etc.

I do not think the scientists are full of crap when it comes to applying their measures. The Catagory system may be full of crap... the press who mis-represent the meaning of scientific data and claims may be full of crap... and the public who are unwilling to put any nominal amount of effort into understanding what an expert is actualy talking about when they make a statment... well they are definately full of crap.
But I would not blame the scientists who are hard at work studing the storm for noteing that gee... looks like the wind speed was lower than we thought before... gee.... that means it was a catagory 3 storm not a 4.... interesting.