Some people are saying Hurricane Patricia could be a Category 7 storm - here's what that means

Its 190-mph wind speeds are much stronger than the hurricane category scale defines; Category 5 storms are simply those above 155 mph.

Hal Needham, a hurricane storm surge scientist at Louisiana State University, wrote a blog on WXshift calling Patricia a Category 7 storm, since that's what it would be if the scale were extrapolated up.

The category of tropical storm a hurricane is in as it makes landfall actually makes a big difference on the amount of damage it could inflict.

It's tough to predict what category Patricia will be as it gets closer to its expected landfall in southwest Mexico. Hurricanes typically lose intensity over time, so their category usually decreases as they get closer to land.

But Patricia will likely still be a pretty big storm, considering how big it was when it formed. Needham is even predicting the storm surge could be as high as 16.5 feet.

For historical context, Hurricane Katrina reached a Category 5 storm out at sea, but hit New Orleans as a Category 3. Similarly, Hurricane Sandy was technically a post-tropical cyclone when it hit the East Coast, though it was a Category 3 at one point. Its storm surge reached 8 feet in parts of New Jersey.

So what do the categories mean?

And what could the damage be if a hurricane were to make landfall as a tropical storm, or a Category 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 - or even 7?