Category Five: Superstorms and the Warming Oceans That Feed Them

The big one is coming: “The most powerful storm ever seen on Earth will form from a cluster of convective supercells sometime around 2100. The hurricane will be presaged by a half-century of droughts, wildfires, floods, famine and sea-level rise.” And New York City will take a direct hit: “Those lucky enough to live in a modern, structurally sound skyscraper in midtown or upper Manhattan will watch from upper floors as foaming brown channels of water rush through the streets and float cars, ferries, trees and buses down Third Avenue and Broadway.”

Mercy.

This dire, doomsday forecast is just one arresting moment in award-winning writer Porter Fox’s book Category Five: Superstorms and the Warming Oceans That Feed Them. For seafarers, especially, this work is vitally important.

Fox comes from a sailing family. His father, Crozer, was a Maine boatbuilder who founded Able Marine, maker of the salty Whistler line of yachts. A few years ago, Fox and I sailed together on mutual friend John Kretschmer’s cutter in the Caribbean. (Full disclosure: That voyage plays a significant role in Category Five.)

Fox’s previous book, The Last Winter, was a deep dive into the effects of climate change to northern climes. Category Five is another examination of extreme weather, but unveiled on a much broader canvas: the vast oceans from which all weather derives.

Literally and figuratively, Category Five covers a lot of water. It delves deeply into the scientific realms of oceanography and meteorology that shape our contemporary understanding of the seas, and the ways oceans “have shaped the arc of human civilization and the genesis and growth of nations throughout history.”

What makes this book such an absorbing read, however, is the sometimes eccentric and always eclectic cast of characters—all intensely intertwined with the oceans across multiple pursuits, studies and disciplines.

Kretschmer, a lifelong offshore sailor and noted marine author, is the first of these characters; his harrowing tale of getting ambushed at sea by lethal Hurricane Bob in 1991 is not for the faint of heart. Next is Jimmy Cornell, a Romanian refugee turned broadcaster and then circumnavigator; his oceanic obsessions led to a career in nautical publishing, and his book Cornell’s Ocean Atlas charts the snowballing growth and intensity of tropical cyclones.

Then there are the scientists. From his base in South Florida, Greg Foltz of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration was able to enter the eye of Hurricane Sam virtually in the North Atlantic—with 125 mph winds swirling—via a 20-foot unmanned sail drone, a vessel “never intended to outrun hurricanes, [but] designed to sail into them.” The builder of that drone, oceanographer Richard Jenkins, launched his career chasing land-speed records across lake and salt beds in wind-powered vehicles.

And then there’s “carbon modeler” Galen McKinley, whose studies “transect many fields: computer science, oceanography and climate science.” She’s a carbon-dioxide detective, chasing a riddle with elusive clues. Fox writes: “The journey of CO₂ from the sky to the ocean—where gradients, currents and processes yet to be fully defined either sequester or release it into the air—was in fact the tale of climate change itself, of our fate on this warming planet, and of the future of superstorms. I wanted to see the carbon cycle for myself and find some answers.”

Woven through it all is Fox’s journey as a sailor charting his own course through life, the son of an enigmatic father who navigated his own bumpy seaway. In that regard, Category Five is not only a beautifully written rumination and dissertation, but also a memoir. One that comes from a mariner. One of us.  

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