Calvin

Hurricanes

Hurricanes have many amazing facts about which one can study. One can study big and small hurricanes. The speed, winds and cause are also big factors in describing hurricanes. Hurricanes make people decide to be meteorologists. Meteorologists have very important jobs. They track storms and other weather things and warn people about them. I think hurricanes are really cool. Defining the hurricane is a good topic with which to start. A hurricane is a type of cyclone, a low-pressure storm that has winds and clouds forming around the center. Hurricanes are grouped in wind speed by miles per hour (M.P.H.). The wind speeds range from seventy-four to two hundred M.P.H. Each category has a range of speeds. Each category has a range of speeds. Category one has winds from seventy-four to ninety-five M.P.H. Category two has winds from ninety-six to one hundred and ten M.P.H. Category three has winds from one hundred eleven to one hundred thirty M.P.H. Category four has winds from one hundred thirty-one to one hundred fifty-five M.P.H. Category five has winds greater than one hundred fifty-six M.P.H. There are clouds that spin around the center (or the eye). The air and clouds spin in a counter-clockwise direction. The eye is the calmest and least destructive part of the hurricane. Hurricanes are the biggest storms to hit the earth. They can cover 500,000 square miles and last up to three weeks. Hurricanes are very special in their naming system because they are the only storms to get named. I think knowing what a hurricane is, is important. There are four steps in the building of a hurricane. Some hurricanes can start out really tiny, others start out bigger. The first step of a hurricane is when the sun heats the ocean water. Next the water becomes hot enough to evaporate rapidly. In the third step of a hurricane, the hurricane gets help from the world by spinning and the winds spinning around the eye. The fourth and final step of the process is when the wind speed reaches seventy-four M.P.H. Thunder, lightening, and rain come along with it. A hurricane starts spinning counterclockwise when it starts. To have a hurricane begin there needs to be at least an eighty degree temperature in the water. I think these steps are very interesting. Three important attributes of hurricanes are location, climate and temperatures. Hurricanes always form over oceanic water. They will form over the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of North Africa, the Caribbean Sea, the Gulf of Mexico or the West coast of Mexico. Antarctica is the only continent that never gets hurricanes. Antarctica doesn't have hurricanes because the waters are too cold there. Speaking of temperature, there is a phenomenon that is called “ El Nino”. El Nino comes every two-ten years. What happens is part of the Pacific Ocean gets really warm waters and winds dramatically change which makes the winds blow eastward toward South America. The area of rainfalls can be so big that it can go all the way to Australia! The way hurricanes move so quickly to all different places is they travel at ten -fifty M.P.H. I think the “El Nino” phenomenon is amazing. Some of the earlier hurricanes were some of the worst hurricanes in history. A hurricane that hit the Caribbean Sea is still the worst on record. In 1870 it left 22,000 people lifeless. It is the hurricane with the highest death total ever. The total included about 9000 from the French island of Martinique, more than 9300 for the British island of Barbados, and 9000 on Dutch Island. The first hurricane ever recorded happened when Christopher Columbus encountered one while traveling to the new world. The 20th Century began and one struck Galveston, Texas on September 2, 1900. When the hurricane was coming to Galveston, the residents did not care. It was a bad decision because around 6000 people died. I think the earlier hurricanes were actually some of the more disastrous ones. There have been some very famous hurricanes that tons of people talk and think about all around the United States. One of the more famous hurricanes is Hurricane Andrew. Hurricane Andrew had winds that reached one hundred sixty-five M.P.H. and massive destruction. The death total was not high because thanks to meteorologists, people knew that the hurricane was coming. In Florida the hurricane caused twenty billion dollars in damage. After the hurricane hit Florida, it went to Louisiana and caused three hundred million dollars in damage. Thanks to Andrew 300,000 people were homeless. This hurricane had the worst property damage ever for a hurricane. Andrew was the third strongest hurricane in the century. In 1969 Hurricane Camille hit the Gulf Coast of Mexico. The hurricane's winds hit two hundred M.P.H., and the hurricane was expected to hit Florida. However, it went from the Gulf Coast to the Mississippi Delta. An apartment in Mississippi had twenty-four people in it, and only one survived by jumping out a window holding onto a pillow. She floated onto a tree. She was found the next day with serious injuries. One hundred forty-three people died because of Camille. Hurricane Katrina is a totally different story. The hurricane was a category five storm. The storm rolled into the Gulf Coast and still managed to hit New Orleans with pretty good power. It was one of the most violent hurricanes ever to strike the United States. It hit Florida, Mississippi, Alabama and Louisiana. Some countries that are hit have different names for hurricanes, for example, Willy Willies, Cyclones, or Typhoons. When naming the hurricanes, they are named after men or women. Hurricane Hugo hit Charleston, South Carolina. Hugo caused six billion dollars in damage with one hundred fifty M.P.H. winds, which helped cause a lot of damage. The storm hit the Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico, and South Carolina before turning north and eventually dying in Canada. This hurricane was the most intense tropical cyclone on record to hit the Atlantic coast north of Florida. Another really bad hurricane was Hurricane Mitch. Hurricane Mitch hit Central America in 1998. The winds hit one hundred eighty M.P.H. and stayed that way for thirty-three hours. Some places got six feet of rain. Ten thousand people died during the storm. Some people had to wait a week before getting rescued. Even though hurricanes seem so terrible, they can be good in a way. One way is that it helps water get to the dryer parts of the world that other storms cannot reach. Hurricanes help some of the equator's warmer air get to the cooler parts of the earth. One of the absolute best things about these big disasters is that they get people to come and help other people recover as much as they can from the terrible disaster that hit. Hurricanes are good for an important part of the natural cycle on the earth. People in all different places depend on the rain from hurricanes. Hurricanes account for ten to fifteen percent of the rain that falls in the southeastern United States. Farmers also depend on hurricanes for a lot of water to keep their crops from dying. Hurricanes have a lot more bad things than good things, but good things do happen. The eye is a fascinating part of the hurricane. It is also a very calm part of a hurricane, which seems weird because one would think that the whole storm would be destructive. The eye of the storm is its exact center. The eye is very calm and quiet. In fact, when the eye comes out over the land, the sun comes out but the other side of the storm is still to come. Some people even leave their protection and are unaware the other side is there. The eye of a hurricane is the shape of a funnel. The eye is usually ten to forty miles in diameter. The eye wall is around the eye of the hurricane. The wind in the eye wall can reach two hundred M.P.H. The eye wall is the most violent part of the storm. The wall is basically a ring of huge thunderstorms. The eye and the eye wall have very big differences. There is a difference between a tropical storm and a hurricane. A hurricane is just a type of tropical thunderstorm, but it is much worse. Going from a tropical storm to a hurricane includes the winds picking up, rain falling harder, and bigger waves. A tropical storm and hurricane need two things: humid air and convergence. Humid air is heavy with water vapor. Convergence is the coming together of the winds. A storm that has wind speeds of forty to seventy-three M.P.H. is called a tropical depression. The major number for hurricanes is seventy-four M.P.H. Some people do not think there is much of a difference between a tropical storm and a hurricane. Almost everything studied has jobs connected to it. One job connected to hurricanes is being a meteorologist. You have to have a bachelor's degree in meteorology. Meteorologists are very important because they warn people when big storms are coming. Another job related to hurricanes is being a rescuer that supplies people with food and water. Often people in hurricanes have their houses demolished. It you want to be a rescue worker, you can be a volunteer and go down south to do that. Those jobs would be very helpful to other people. Wilson Bentley, known as the snowflake man, had an amazing life as a photographer of snowflakes. Bentley was the most serious, hard working person one could meet. The most facts I learned was on Wilson but many facts came from his whole family. The biggest accomplishment in his life was when he was born in 1866. The next giant accomplishment was when he got his camera and started taking photomicrographs in 1883. He had a second interest in 1898 when he started photographing raindrops. In 1904 he stopped photographing raindrops but continued to take snow crystal photographs. In 1917 he was criticized by professor Gustov Hellman who thought that Bentley was retouching his photographs, which was not true. Also, in the year 1917, the Pathe news made a motion picture of Bentley in action and taking photographs of snow crystals. One of the biggest accomplishments in his life was when he took one photo on March 31, 1931 and ended up with 5381 photomicrographs. Just nine months later Wilson Awlyn Bentley died of lobar pneumonia. I learned a lot about hurricanes, and people always want to know why I picked hurricanes as my topic. I picked it because I was going to do national disasters, but that was too big. My teacher suggested a smaller topic, like hurricanes. So I studied hurricanes. I hoped to learn as much as I can. I especially hoped to learn if hurricanes could be good in some way, which they can be. I learned all I wanted to learn out of this research project. Things did not turn out as I expected because I thought it would be a lot harder. My research was by books and web sites, which were very helpful to me. It was difficult to find as many things as I thought I would out of books, but I found a lot of facts. I started out knowing nothing about the independent study project (I.S.P.) and then started getting tons of experience along the way of I.S.P. Experience is a good thing when there is a big project like this to do. This project can be very effective in many ways. One was is your knowledge. Another is for a brighter future when a lot of important information is learned. I could not have learned much more because I would have written a very long report. Hurricanes are very, very fascinating. Glossary captivated - the condition or time of being captive. evaporates - to change liquid into vapor. invasive - aggressive or offensive. metaphor - an implied comparison between two different things. obtained - to get possession of. perseverance - the act of persevering continued in patient effort. phenomena - an extremely unusual or extraordinary thing to occur. photographic - of or like a photograph or photography. photomicrographs - a photograph taken through a microscope. Bibliography Hood, Susan. Hurricanes! New York: Simon Spotlight, 1998. Arlehe, Erlbach. Hurricanes. Chicago: Childrens Press, 1993. Meister, Cari. Hurricanes. U.S.: ABDO Daughters, 1999. Morris, Neil. Hurricanes, Typhoons and Other Tropical Cyclones. China: World Book, 2008. Lauber, Patrica. Hurricanes. New York: Schoolastic, 1996. Murray, Peter. Hurricanes. U.S.: World Book, 1996. Greenberg, Keith. Hurricanes and Tornadoes. New York: 21st Century Books, 1994. Allen, Jean. Hurricanes. Mancato, MN: Capstone Books, 2001. Stark, Anne. “Research Links Peoples Activities to Temps in Hurricane Regions.” Alberta Public Affairs Bureau. Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. 12-02-07 <http//www.PublicAffairs.gov>. Windows to the World Team. “Eyes and Eye Walls.” The University Corporation for Atmospheric Research. 12-02-07 <http//www.UCAR.edu>. Gurto, Robert. “The 2006 Hurricane Season Was Normal”. Eurekalert. Hurricane Season Organization.< 12-07-07 <http//www.eurekalert.org>. CNN. “Hurricane Katrina”. CNN.com. 12-19-07. <http//www.CNN.com>.

Click here to go back to the top of this page

Click here to go to the list of reports

Click here to go to Prospect School's website

Click here to go to Langston School's website

Click here to go to the Oberlin City School District's website

Click below to email the teacher
Kim Koos at kkoos @ oberlin.k12.oh.us
or John Memmott at jmemmott @ oberlin.k12.oh.us

All Contents Copyrighted © 2008 Oberlin City School District - - - - All Rights Reserved