Canon v5.0 — Hurricane Structural Integrity

Canon v5.0 is a structural integrity diagnostic for tropical cyclones. It does not forecastlandfall location, track, or timing. It forecasts the internal organisational state of a storm:whether the system is intensifying coherently, approaching peak maturity, or beginning structural breakdown. Applied to Hurricane Katrina (2005) using NHC best-track data, Canon v5.0correctly detects the onset of rapid intensification on 27 August, peak structural organisationon 28 August (Category 5, 902 mb), and pre-landfall structural collapse beginning in thehours before the 29 August landfall — all from the storm’s internal pressure and vorticitystructure alone. These transitions were not fully anticipated by real-time 2005 operationalintensity forecasts, which underestimated the peak intensity and the speed of post-landfallstructural collapse. The Canon framework derives these detections from first principles: twoaxioms (motion is intrinsic; scale invariance is universal) applied through a pressure hierarchy,a signed drift integrator tracking persistent quadrant asymmetry, and a maturity operatorencoding the storm’s accumulated organisational history