Hurricane Dorian (2019) — DPS 88/100

Peak Category 5 · Atlantic

88/100

Destructive Power Score

Catastrophic

Hurricane Dorian (2019) scored 88/100 on the Destructive Power Score scale — a Catastrophic event.

Saffir-Simpson rated this a Category 5 based on peak wind alone. DPS combines intensity with storm size, surge potential, duration of coastal exposure, and geographic reach for a fuller picture of destructive potential.

Dorian held Category 5 intensity for roughly 48 hours over the northwestern Bahamas, with peak winds of 160 knots and a central pressure of 910 mb. The track stalled almost entirely — forward speed dropped near zero for 57 hours while the eyewall ground over Abaco and Grand Bahama. DPS measures that intensity-and-duration profile regardless of where the destruction lands. The Bahamas zone is already weighted at 0.15 in the duration integral (versus 1.0 for the US mainland), which dampens Dorian's score compared to a hypothetical US Cat 5 stall of the same length; without that weighting Dorian would score in Katrina territory. The $5B damage figure reflects the Bahamas's economic scale, not the storm's destructive potential.

Landfall: Windward Islands, Puerto Rico / USVI, Bahamas, NE Florida / Georgia (4 landfalls).

Peak Winds

184 mph · 160 kt

Min Pressure

910 mb

Peak IKE

235.7 TJ

Basin

Atlantic

DPS Rating

Catastrophic

Explore the full interactive analysis below — wind field, track, score components, and side-by-side comparisons. How DPS works.

Computing Destructive Power Score...

○Fetching storm track data

○Computing wind energy (IKE)

○Calculating DPS, IAS, ERS scores

○Rendering map and charts

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The Saffir-Simpson scale only measures peak wind speed at the center. It ignores the storm's size, which is often the biggest factor in damage. Hurricane Ike (2008) made landfall as "only" a Cat 2, but its enormous wind field caused catastrophic damage across the entire Texas coast.

DPS captures what the Category scale misses: size, surge, duration of coastal exposure, and geographic breadth.

IKE (TJ) — Integrated Kinetic Energy in Terajoules. Total wind energy accounting for both speed and storm size.
mph — Miles per hour (wind speed).
mb / hPa — Millibars, a pressure unit. Lower = stronger storm. Normal sea-level is ~1013 mb.
kt — Knots (1 kt = 1.15 mph). Used for storm movement speed.

Hurricane Dorian (2019) — DPS 88/100

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