Is a Category 6 hurricane possible? Milton gets people talking

The hurricane, which was heading toward the Gulf of Mexico, grew very strong very quickly on Monday and exploded from a tropical storm at 60 miles per hour to a massive Category 5 hurricane at 180 miles per hour on Sunday morning – a staggering increase of 130 miles per hour in 36 hours.

The fast-developing hurricane, which shows no signs of stopping, will not technically be a Category 6 because that category does not currently exist. But it could soon reach the level of a hypothetical Category 6. Experts have debated and sparked controversy over whether the National Hurricane Center’s long-used scale for classifying hurricane wind speeds from Category 1 to 5 may need an overhaul.

Milton is already in rarefied air, reaching wind speeds of more than 156 miles per hour, making it a Category 5. But if it reaches wind speeds of 192 miles per hour, it will exceed a threshold that only five hurricanes and typhoons have reached since 1980, according to Michael Wehner, a climate scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and Jim Kossin, a retired federal scientist and science adviser the nonprofit First Street Foundation.