Hurricane Irma is more powerful than all eight major storms of this year’s Atlantic hurricane season combined. That’s just one shattering measure of the storm’s strength from meteorologist Phil Klotzbach, research scientist at Colorado State University’s Department of Atmospheric Science. Irma’s 185 mph winds make it the strongest storm on record in the Atlantic Ocean outside of the Caribbean and Gulf of
Mexico, according to Klotzbach’s research, which he shared with The Daily Beast. Irma’s wind speeds are tied with the second-strongest maximum winds of all time for an Atlantic hurricane, matching a 1935 storm in the Florida Keys and Hurricanes Gilbert (1988) and Wilma (2005). Only one hurricane, Allen in 1980, has recorded stronger winds, at 190 mph. The intense winds make Irma a Category 5 storm, the most severe on the hurricane scale. Hurricane Harvey, which flooded Houston and destroyed swaths of Texas, was a Category 4. READ MORE
