Last week we had a lot of bad weather, including lots of rain and flooding and high winds and tornadoes. All of these things happened because of Hurricane Gustav.
A hurricane is a powerful, whirling storm that starts in the ocean near Africa or sometimes Brazil. Hurricane Season is from June through November. But the 3 most likely months for hurricanes are August, September and October, with September being the worst month for hurricanes to occur. My grandfather said that when he was a boy that they used to call hurricanes "September gales" because they mostly happened in September.
Hurricanes usally start off as a Tropical Depression or Tropical Storm. There are 5 catagories of hurricanes. Catagory 1 hurricanes are the weakest and Catagory 5 hurricanes are the strongest.
Hurricanes are given names by the National Hurricane Center. This helps scientists keep up when there is more than one storm in the ocean. There are 6 lists of names that are used over and over and over. But if a hurricane is really, really bad, then the name is retired and never used again. Hurricanes before 1953 didn’t have names.
Three of the biggest hurricanes to hit Louisiana were Hurricane Audrey in 1957, and Hurricanes Katrina and Rita in 2005. Those hurricane names have been retired.
One of the worst hurricanes ever happened more than 100 years ago. It happened on September 8, 1900 at Galveston, Texas. This was before anyone could predict hurricanes, so no one knew it was coming and no one prepared. That hurricane killed over 8000 people, which makes it the deadliest hurricane of all time. I sure feel sorry for the people who lived in Galveston in 1900. They didn’t know that a bad hurricane was going to come until it was too late to get away from it. Most of them died.
Hurricanes can be scarey. Bad things like floods and tornadoes and severe damage can happen because of hurricanes. But we can be thankful that today we are able to predict hurricanes and follow their path with enough time for us to prepare so that not as many people die.
written by: Joel
Sept. 7, 2008
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1 comment:
Excellent and informative article, Joel.
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