"Martin Rowley" wrote in
:

... interesting concept: I wonder if some sort of mid-latitude 'index'
of severity has ever been attempted, other than a classification by
central pressure?

Martin

I'm often thinking about how we should try and rate storms in terms of
their measurable track features. If I had to pick one variable for rating
a mid-latitude cyclone it would be peak 24-hour intensification rate over
central pressure.

I feel that the rapid spin-up systems tend to be the most damaging - i.e.
one storm that is 970mb but took 48 hours of gradual deepening from
1000mb to reach that pressure may not be as damaging as one that took 12
hours to do so. Also there's the forward speed factor too - the
ageostrophic pressure-tendancy related winds will be much higher in a
rapidly deepening, fast moving 970mb system than a static, slowly
deepening 970mb system.

There's a paper in Bulletin of the American Met Society going back to
2002 I think of someone's attempts to classify winter storms and came up
with a severity index that had a number of things combined - including
forward speed, deepening rate and central pressure.

Got me thinking now!!

Cheers
Richard