Milton. Two major hurricanes battered or are set to batter parts of Florida in the last week and a half, which has many trying to understand the scale of the weather systems. The National Hurricane Center uses the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale to determine storm categories.

Hurricane Milton reached Category 5 status on Monday, and is expected to make landfall near Tampa, Florida, on Wednesday night. The damage wrought by Hurricane Helene was especially extensive in western North Carolina, a region far from the Florida coast where the system made landfall as a Category 4 storm.