Hurricane facts
I am interested in hurricanes because I know they happen quite a bit, and they are very destructive, so I wanted to learn about them. I also thought they would be interesting to learn about why we don’t get them over here, and how they start.
A hurricane starts to form over warm water, this heat up the air making lighter and the water evaporates making water vapor which is also lighter than air. The warm and wet air begins to rise sucking cooler air in at the sides. Sine the world is spinning the air being sucked in start to spin slowly, as the air is pulled in the spinning becomes faster and faster. If the hurricane is fast enough it can produce wind speeds of 140
The hurricanes in the Northern Hemisphere usually turn north in a counter clockwise direction and the hurricanes in the Southern Hemisphere turn in a clockwise direction. This is caused by the pull of the Earth’s poles. This reminds me of how water turns different ways when it goes down the drain in the Northern and southern Hemisphere.
The average size hurricanes are 420 miles wide. The big hurricanes can some times be 552 miles wide. The eye of the hurricane is mostly calm, it is generally 20 to 30 miles wide. The biggest hurricanes occur in the northwest pacific ocean.
If the hurricane reaches land, it can be very destructive. The most destruction happens in the area right around the eye. The speed of the winds in the hurricane are over 100 miles per hour, causing trees to bend, roofs to come off houses, and mobile homes to flip. The wind can also push the water in the ocean on shore destroying everything near shore.
Originally for hundreds of years hurricanes were named after the Saint’s day they occurred on. In 1953 the U.S. weather service decided to name the hurricanes female names for the storms. In 1979 both men and woman names were used. One name for each letter of the alphabet is chosen, except for Q, U, and Z. They decide the name by using six lists in rotation. The same lists are reused every six years. The only time a new name is added is when the hurricane is so deadly that everyone remembers it, that name is then retired. A good example is Hurricane Katrina.
We have had some very bad hurricanes in recent history in the Gulf of Mexico. Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, and Hurricane Andrew in Florida caused millions of dollars in damage and killed lots of people. These areas have hurricane warning systems to evacuate people in the event of another hurricane.
