Katrina was a barely a category 3. Any storm actually hitting landfall as a five is highly improbable and would have permanently altered the coastline. It arguably has never happened.
Wrong, Lookindown is correct, 3 cat 5 hurricanes have hit US in 20th century.
1935 "labor Day" Florida Keys Hurricane
Hurricane Camille, Mississippi in August 18, 1969
Hurricane Andrew, Dade County, Fla. Aug. 24, 1992
History of Category 5 hurricanes
By Jack Williams, USATODAY.com
Category 5 hurricanes, with winds faster than 155 mph, are rare with only three hitting the USA in the 20th century and only 23 known to have reached this strength at any time during their lives between 1928 and 2003.
(Graphic: The hurricane intensity scale)
The three Category 5 storms to hit the USA were the 1935 Florida Keys "Labor Day" hurricane, Hurricane Camille, which hit Mississippi in 1969, and Hurricane Andrew, which hit Dade County, Fla., on Aug. 24, 1992.
The records aren't good enough to say whether any earlier storms that hit the USA would be Category 5 by today's standards.
Hurricane Isabel in 2003 was the Atlantic's first Category 5 hurricane of the 21st Century, but it weakened to a category 2 storm before hitting the USA. Fortunately, many Category 5 storms weaken before hitting land. Of the 23 known Category 5 storms since 1928, only eight were still Category five when they hit land. (Related: NCDC list of Category 5 storms)
Before Isabel, Mitch had been the latest Category 5 storm in the Western Hemisphere. Before Mitch, it was Linda, in the Eastern Pacific in September 1997.
El Niño warming of the Pacific off the Mexican Coast helped give Hurricane Linda the energy needed to make it the strongest storm ever observed in the eastern Pacific. On Sept. 11 and 12, Hurricane Linda's winds were blowing at an estimated 185 to 190 mph, making it the strongest hurricane ever observed in the eastern Pacific. For a time Linda threatened to hit the California Coast. The cool water along the California Coast would almost surely had wakened it to a tropical storm. But Linda turned away to die over the open Pacific.
Hurricane Hugo in 1989 was also briefly a Category 5 storm when it was over the Atlantic east of the Bahamas after hitting Puerto Rico and before hitting South Carolina. On Sept. 15 at 2 p.m. ET and again at 8 p.m. ET, hurricane hunter airplanes estimated Hugo's surface winds at just over 155 mph and 161 mph. It hit South Carolina north of Charleston on Sept. 22 as a Category 4 storm.
The strongest hurricane ever measured in the Western Hemisphere was Gilbert in 1988. The 888 millibar central pressure recorded in Gilbert on Sept. 14, 1988, is the lowest ever recorded in an Atlantic Ocean, Caribbean Sea or Gulf of Mexico storm.
The world record for the lowest tropical cyclone pressure is 870 millibars in Typhoon Tip in the northwest Pacific Ocean on Oct. 12, 1979.
Gilbert was at 19.7 degrees north latitude, 83.8 west longitude in the western Caribbean Sea, south of the Cayman Islands, when a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration WP-3D aircraft recorded the record low pressure.
Gilbert weakened some, but still hit Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula as a Category 5 storm causing extensive damage. Gilbert also caused serious damage in Jamaica, the Cayman Islands, and farther west in Mexico when it came ashore on the Gulf Coast south of Brownsville, Texas, after crossing the Yucatan and regaining some of the strength it lost crossing the Yucatan Peninsula.
http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/weather/whcat5.htm
if it keeps it up it may drift closer to us than expected!!!!!
