A hurricane is easily the most powerful storm that mother-nature can throw at us. Every year people who live on the coasts fight hurricanes with no dismay. A hurricane is simply too strong.
Their winds reach speeds of 75 mph. The winds around the eye wall can reach 130 to 150 mph. They are 200 to 300 miles in diameter. The number of casualties is endless, as well as the widespread destruction that takes millions of dollars to repair. Even if the hurricane doesn’t cause a lot of damage, the storm surge will. Storm surge is the great tidal waves that crash into our coasts and make huge floods that are caused by hurricanes.
Hurricanes are extremely large area’s of low pressure that are over the ocean in either the North Atlantic ocean, or the eastern North Pacific Ocean. If a hurricane is in the western Pacific Ocean than it is called a typhoon. One in the Indian Ocean is called a cyclone. The danger region of a hurricane is normally in the Gulf of Mexico or the Atlantic Ocean. The hurricane season is the six month time period from June-November.
The peak month of hurricanes is September. Hurricanes form over the ocean. Easterly waves, what hurricanes develop from, are long, narrow regions of low pressure which occur in ocean winds called trade winds. At first, these easterly waves can grow into something called, a tropical depression. A tropical depression occurs when winds are up to 31 mph.
Then tropical depressions can be upgraded into a tropical storm if the winds reach speeds of 74 mph or less. Then finally a the storm can be bumped up into a hurricane if the winds reach 75 mph. The National Weather Service is constantly trying to provide us with data and other information about when and where hurricanes are forming. It has been said that the only way to reduce the number of fatalities in serious storms is to give people more warning time for them to go to a safer place. Many times in hurricanes people are told to evacuate there city or state.
The more time that people have to do this the more that people will do this. Throughout the entire hurricane season meteorologists keep a close watch on the Atlantic and the Pacific Oceans. They examine pictures of the area taken by satellites, and also take information on air pressure, wind speed, and temperatures. One of there most important jobs is to gather information on where the storm will hit, and how powerful it will be.
They track these monster storms with airplanes, satellites, and radar. The warm ocean water fuels and powers the hurricane. Normally hurricanes move westward at first and gain strength. Then hurricanes turn east when they hit the equator. The hurricane dies when it ends up over cool oceans. Hurricane floyd Essay was a storm that did not go as planned.
Myself, and many meteorologists hypothesized that Floyd would crash hard into the eastern coast and hit states like Florida and Georgia hard. Instead Floyd decided to abruptly turn northward and seemed to weaken. Floyd had the potential to be a killer storm, but fortunately for us, it wasn’t. Hurricane Floyd became a Tropical depression on September 7th. It was located in the Atlantic Ocean at 14. 6 degrees North and 46.
2 degrees West. It was first reported to have wind speeds of 25 mph. Later Floyd became a Tropical storm on September 8th with winds of 40 mph. This is when it moved West-North-West towards the Lesser Antilles.
Floyd reached a category 1 hurricane on September 10th with winds of 80 mph. It gained strength and size and plowed into the Bahamas. It was a very strong category 4 hurricane with winds of 155 mph. It had a diameter of 600 miles! Hurricane Floyd headed straight towards Florida. Warnings were in excess. Over one million people were forced to leave there homes and travel away from the path of this monster storm.
However, Floyd turned North and spared Florida. These people didn’t have to leave there homes, but if Floyd would of hit Florida as expected the evacuation of these people would have saved .
