AT U R EÊSF U N R Y What Is a Hurricane What Is a Hurricane Ahurricane is a furious spiraling tropical storm system that can smash buildings apart and hurl trees cars and massive chunks of debris far into the air Wind speeds in a hurricane can reach more than 150 miles 250 kilometers per hour The wind brings with it torrential rain and thunderstorms A hurricane roars in from the ocean and lashes the coast for hours causing terrible damage but dies down quite quickly as it moves farther inland Sand whips through a parking lot in Fort Lauderdale Florida as Hurricane Katrina 2005 hits the United States Angry gods and big winds Tropical storm systems in the Americas are called hurricanes but they are known by different names around the world People in the Americas call them hurricanes after the ancient Mayan and Taino god of wind storms and destruction Hurakan or Jurakan In southeast Asia where tropical storms come from the Pacific people call them typhoons from the Japanese tai foon meaning great wind In India and Australia tropical storms are called cyclones A tropical storm can be officially classed as a hurricane typhoon or cyclone if it has winds that blow faster than 74 miles 118 kilometers per hour 4
AT U R EÊSF U N R Y Hurricanes in history Hurricanes cyclones and typhoons have always happened but because many strike areas where people did not keep written records we do not have detailed accounts of them going back very far in time As soon as Europeans began to visit South and Central America they encountered hurricanes Christopher Columbus’s ship sheltered from a hurricane in a bay in 1502 but 20 other ships were sunk by the storm on their way back to Spain A hurricane and resulting sea flood in Galveston Texas in 1900 destroyed the town and killed around 8,000 people CASE STUDY The Great Hurricane 1780 Three hurricanes struck the West Indies in 1780 the worst of which killed 22,000 people over eight days making it the deadliest hurricane ever to strike the Western Hemisphere It destroyed nearly every building in Barbados flattened St Lucia demolished St Pierre the capital of Martinique and on St Vincent it sent a storm surge 19 8 feet six meters high that washed villages out to sea Most of the British fleet at St Lucia was sunk as well as 15 Dutch ships in Grenada It would be 200 years before another hurricane would claim more than 10,000 lives in the Atlantic W h a t i s a H u r r i c a n e 5
AT U R EÊSF U N R Y Where Hurricanes Where Hurricanes Happen Happen Tropical storms occur in tropical regions of the Atlantic Indian and Pacific oceans The water temperature must be at least 79 7 ºF 26 5 ºC for the storm to be able to gather enough strength to be classed as a hurricane Most Atlantic hurricanes form off the west coast of Africa then drift westward to reach land in Central America and the Caribbean The people of Chockwe Mozambique depend on rainstorms but floods are still disruptive Landfall When a hurricane cyclone or typhoon reaches land it wreaks destruction along the coast and continues its path inland After hitting land the storm rapidly loses power since it is no longer heated from beneath by tropical seas Within 12 hours most of the force has been spent although it can travel as far as 175 miles 280 kilometers inland before dying out Storm zones The most destructive hurricanes strike the southeast coast of the United States Central America and the Caribbean Typhoons plague the coasts around the Indian Ocean and many parts of the Pacific Ocean In the Indian Ocean they most often strike Indonesia India Sri Lanka and Thailand but also hit 6
AT U R EÊSF U N R Y Madagascar and east Africa In the Pacific they are most common around Japan eastern China and the Philippines but can also strike the west coast of Australia and New Guinea Their impact is greatest in areas where most people live The Caroline and Marianas island chains and the north coast of Luzon Island in the Philippines have the largest number of tropical storms anywhere in the world with around 10 each year Mozambique in Africa depends on the rain brought by tropical storms to boost its water supplies but the country frequently floods as a result of these typhoons GREATEST STORM IN THE SOLAR SYSTEM Jupiter’s red spot a giant ancient storm system The planet Jupiter has a large red spot which is actually a massive storm system Like a hurricane it consists of winds whirling in a circle at great speeds around 425 miles 680 kilometers per hour Jupiter is a gas giant a planet made entirely of gas so the storm will never drift over land and die down The storm has been raging for at least 180 years The storm is 10,250 miles 16,500 kilometers across covering about the same area as half of the Earth’s surface W h e r e H u r r i c a n e s H a p p e n 7
