hurricane

A hurricane, also known as a cyclone or typhoon (same thing), is a dangerous storm with high, strong winds of at least 119 kilometres an hour and heavy rains. The sea rises, streets fill with water, trees can be knocked down and roofs damaged or torn off. It is the most damaging sort of weather in eastern America, the Caribbean and south-east Asia. Dozens to hundreds can be killed.

Hurricanes start in the warm waters of an ocean. They generally travel north-westerly. The two largest countries that regularly get bad hurricanes are China and America.

Hurricanes come in summer and autumn, but the worst ones mostly come in the last four weeks of summer. Some summers there are hardly any hurricanes, in others they come one right after another. On rare occasion there can be two hurricanes at once.

Hurricanes are given names just like people: Katrina, Andrew, Gilbert, Floyd and so on. They used to all have girl names but now only half do. The name of the first hurricane of the season starts with A, the second one with B and so on.

Hurricanes are rated on the Saffir-Simpson Scale from 1 to 5:

• Category 1: 119-153 km/h: knocks over signs, breaks off branches
• Category 2: 154-177 km/h: knocks over trees, roof damage
• Category 3: 178-208 km/h: heavy roof damage, mobile homes destroyed
• Category 4: 209-251 km/h: roofs blown off
• Category 5: 252 km/h or more: buildings destroyed

At each level the sea rises higher and the wind blows stronger.

If the centre of the storm passes over you, then the rain and the wind will get worse and worse. Then, suddenly, it will all stop for an hour or so. You are in the calm at the eye of the storm. But then, just as suddenly, the wind and rain will start up again.

If you look at a hurricane from above it looks like a great wheel of cloud with a hole in the middle. That hole is the eye.

Hurricanes over water can grow stronger, but over land they slowly weaken until they become nothing more than a heavy rainstorm. If you live more than 200 kilometres from the ocean, you will be spared the worst.

People think typhoons are somehow different than hurricanes. They are not. It is just another name for the same thing. Typhoon comes from Chinese and means “great wind”.

Here are the worst Atlantic hurricanes from 1950 to 2007 by the recorded number of deaths:

• 1974: Fifi: 90,000
• 1998: Mitch: 9,086
• 1963: Flora: 8,000
• 2004: Jeanne: 3,000
• 1979: David: 2,068
• 2005: Katrina: 1,350

Of these Katrina is by far the worst in American eyes: because it killed more Americans than the others and because it hit a large city, New Orleans. Most Americans born between, say, 1940 and 1998 will not be able to forget it.

So while Jeanne, for example, killed twice as many people as Katrina, most of them were not Americans but Haitians.

– Abagond, 2007.

See also:

• Hurricanes for beginners (Flash)
• US government’s map of currently active hurricanes and disturbances in the Atlantic (NOAA)
• Katrina (2005)
  • The white gunmen of Katrina
  • “George Bush doesn’t care about black people.”
• Sandy (2012)
  • Inside Hurricane Sandy – a hurricane I experienced
  • Hurricane Sandy, Act I, scene ii: Sandy hits the American north-east
• Irma (2017)
• Maria (2017)