The must touted hurricane Irene was scaled down to a tropical storm and now scales down as a post-tropical storm.
The hurricane lost its momentum and sustained winds of 50 miles per hour (85kph), downgrading it devastation scale to a tropical storm. The category 1 winds the lowest on the hurricane scale, did not pack as much of a punch as other storms, but hurricane Irene's vast size, more than 400 miles wide, and slow speed, made it particularly threatening. It took 12 hours or more to pass overhead, wreaking damage estimated in the hundreds of millions of dollars.
The downgrading scale came soon after hurricane Irene reached Canada following a path across the northeastern U.S., where it downed power lines, caused flooding and forced evacuation of thousands of people.

The Saffir- Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale was developed by Civil engineer Herbert Saffir and the metreologist Bob Simpson the director of the National Hurricane Center in 1971. This scale is used to rate the intensity of a hurricane.
This scale is helpful to measure the strength of a hurricane and can be classified from category one to five. The Saffir Simpson Scale also gives an estimate of the property damage a hurricane can cause and the flooding that is expected with the hurricane.
As per the scale, the Category 1 hurricane should sustain winds 74-95 mph, 64-82 kt, or 119-153 km/hr. Hurricane Irene that has hit U.S falls in Category 1 according to the scale and very dangerous winds can produce damage.

Rex Goodnight, chief of engineering with the Kansas City district of the Army Corps has come up with a method of effective construction in Afghanistan by scaling down. This scaling down process involves development of a simplified model for construction, suited for the Afghan terrain. The construction projects taken up previously had been proved totally ineffective as American building codes were used which were problematic in the Afghanistan since the implementation could not take place properly. Goodnight discovered this problem when he visited Afghanistan last year to volunteer for construction projects, and immediately came up with the scaling down plan. Rex said, "The scaling down process meant starting from scratch, and the main aim is to accommodate culturally". Reports say that progress in the region has speeded up due to Goodnight's basic scaling down designs.