Category 1 Hurricanes Are Dangerous Despite The Rating

H​urricanes don't have to be intense to have significant, damaging impacts. Even Category 1 hurricanes are capable of destructive winds, storm surge and rainfall flooding, as recent history has shown.

Rated by wind: Hurricanes are classified based on their maximum sustained winds on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale.​ Category 1 hurricanes have peak sustained winds between 74 and 95 mph.

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L​owest category, but damaging potential: National Weather Service director Ken Graham once said in a seminar, "There's no such thing as 'just a Category 1' hurricane."

G​raham's point is that all hurricanes are dangerous, and not just from their winds.

Let's lay out some recent examples of Category 1 hurricanes that were anything but "just Cat. 1":

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B​eryl 2024 (winds): A​fter it captured the attention of meteorologists by smashing early-season intensity records near the Windward Islands, Hurricane Beryl's second act as a Cat. 1 hurricane left its mark on southeast Texas in July.

B​eryl also produced up to 15 inches of rain in parts of the Houston metro and pushed anywhere from 3 to 9 feet of Gulf water ashore along the Texas coast. But it was Beryl leaving southeast Texas powerless that was most memorable.

Isaac 2012 (surge): While overshadowed late in the season by Superstorm Sandy, Category 1 Hurricane Isaac's large size and slow westward crawl along the Louisiana coast in late August 2012 drove up to 17 feet of storm surge inundation into southeast Louisiana.

P​articularly swamped was Plaquemines Parish, including the towns of Braithwaite and Bel Air, which were inundated when a back levee was overtopped. Other areas unprotected by federal levees were flooded in Orleans, St. Bernard and St. Tammany Parishes.

I​saac's total damage toll from Louisiana to Florida was estimated at $3.8 billion, according to NOAA.

N​icholas 2021 (rainfall flooding): Category 1 Hurricane Nicholas was also overshadowed in its hurricane season by Ida a couple of weeks earlier.

T​hat said, Nicholas' snail's pace movement after its upper Texas coast landfall led to torrential rain over some of the same areas inundated by Hurricane Ida. It's that slow forward speed, not necessarily its wind speed, that made Nicholas such a soaker.

U​p to 17 inches of rain in Louisiana and 18 inches of rain in Mississippi fell ahead of and associated with Nicholas, washing out roads, flooding vehicles and homes.

D​amage from Nicholas was estimated at $1.2 billion, according to NOAA.

Jonathan Erdman is a senior meteorologist at weather.com and has been covering national and international weather since 1996. His lifelong love of meteorology began with a close encounter with a tornado as a child in Wisconsin. Extreme and bizarre weather are his favorite topics. Reach out to him on X (formerly Twitter), Threads, Facebook and Bluesky.