Hawaii Declares Emergency Over Three Hurricanes as Scientists Debate Adding a Category 6

A state still cleaning up, three more storms on the map

Hawaii Gov. Josh Green signed a statewide emergency proclamation on Wednesday, Sept. 2, to speed up preparations for Hurricanes Lowell, Karina and Marie, according to the Epoch Times. The order covers every island in the state.

"Our state is still recovering from Lala, and we are not waiting for another storm to get close before preparing," Green said in a statement cited by the Epoch Times.

Hawaii has reason to move fast. Hurricane Lala struck the islands Aug. 15-16, dumping 20 to 40 inches of rain in some spots, according to Green's office as reported by the Epoch Times. Hundreds of homes were damaged or destroyed. Roads and bridges washed out. Roughly 200,000 power customers across Hawaii Island, Maui and Oahu lost electricity. When Tropical Storm Moke later threatened the state and Green sought a presidential emergency declaration, about 11,290 customers were still in the dark, with restoration in some areas projected to stretch into early September.

The new proclamation activates the Hawaii National Guard for disaster relief and removes the usual $10 million spending cap on the state's Major Disaster Fund, per the Epoch Times. It also loosens procurement, contracting, budgeting, hiring and permitting rules that would otherwise slow emergency work, and lets officials restrict public access to utilities and infrastructure. It does not order evacuations, curfews or closures; those calls remain with state and county authorities if conditions worsen. The relief period runs through Nov. 1, unless Green ends it early.

As of 11 a.m. that Wednesday, Hurricane Lowell was a Category 5 storm with 160 mph sustained winds, positioned about 445 miles south of Hilo, according to the National Weather Service as cited by the Epoch Times. Forecasters at the time projected a sharp turn north that could bring the storm toward the islands. Nothing in the available reporting confirms whether Lowell, Karina or Marie has since made landfall in Hawaii, or what their current tracks look like as of today.

The bigger question: is Category 5 still the ceiling?

Lifting an uncapped disaster fund is one kind of response to bigger storms. A separate debate is playing out over whether the scale used to describe those storms in the first place still works.

The Saffir-Simpson scale, developed in the 1960s, ranks hurricanes solely on wind speed, from 74-95 mph at Category 1 up through 157-plus mph at Category 5. Hurricane Melissa's Oct. 28, 2025 landfall in Jamaica, with sustained winds of 185 mph, reignited talk of adding a Category 6, according to Michael Levy and Sarah Pearl of consulting firm Baringa, writing in Utility Dive. A 2024 study by hurricane researchers proposed that storms with winds exceeding 192 mph could warrant that new tier, the pair note.

Levy and Pearl argue that wind speed alone was never the right yardstick. They point to Superstorm Sandy, which hit the East Coast in October 2012 as a Category 3 but became one of the costliest disasters in U.S. history because of its massive size, storm surge and flooding, not its wind speed. A slow, sprawling Category 3 can outdo a fast Category 5. This kind of nuance gets lost in a single wind-based number.

Not everyone thinks a new category is a good idea. Patrick A. Harr, a hurricane expert and fellow of the American Meteorological Society, told Utility Dive that a Category 6 designation "can serve as a communication strategy to alert the public and policymakers that their past actions are likely inadequate responses to future storms," but only if the messaging is handled carefully. The concern, shared by other researchers Levy and Pearl cite, is that adding a category above 5 could confuse a public that has long treated Category 5 as the worst-case scenario, potentially making people take an actual Category 5 storm less seriously by comparison. Renaming the top of a scale doesn't automatically improve public understanding of risk, and could just as easily muddy it.

Where the two stories meet

Hawaii's grid is the practical version of the argument Baringa is making on paper. Lala wasn't a monster by wind-speed standards, but its rainfall and flooding still knocked out power to 200,000 customers and left some without electricity for weeks. Whatever category label Lowell, Karina or Marie carries when they're closest to the islands, Hawaii's utilities are the ones that have to keep the lights on regardless.

No agency has adopted a Category 6 designation on the official scale. The National Hurricane Center continues to rate storms on the existing five-tier system. What's unresolved is whether Hawaii's uncapped disaster fund, extended through Nov. 1, will need to be tapped again before the Pacific hurricane season winds down, and whether Lowell's forecast turn north materialized into a direct hit on any island.