2008 Woodie Awards
Weathering The Storm
Jonathan Riedel
Issue date: 9/9/05 Section: Commentary
What really is a hurricane? The common man might call it a huge storm. Science majors might call it a low-pressure circulation of tropical rains due to the Coriolis effect. On the other side of the world they'd call it a typhoon, or whatever "hurricane" is in Vietnamese. To people living in a hurricane's path, however, it's a potential assassin, home-wrecker, and plunderer.
I'm a born and raised Floridian. I went through Andrew in 1992 and later moved to the other coast, where Charley ripped us a new one last year. I've been through dozens of others, but these were the big ones.
But what really causes such a destructive phenomenon? Meteorology 101, here we go: A tropical wave is a baby hurricane, which comes off the African coast usually sometime between June and November. As a bratty toddler it becomes a tropical depression, with winds of 38 mph or less. When it reaches its surly adolescence it is a tropical storm - 39 to 73 mph - which can cause a lot of damage but generally isn't tried as an adult. The Al Capone of tropical storms is a hurricane, with sustained winds of 74 mph and up. A little more than twice that makes a Category 5 storm, strong enough to destroy absolutely everything in its path. Stick your head out of a car going 75 mph and that's the lowest degree of hurricane. Like, whoa.
Where do they get the names - sometimes cosmopolitan, sometimes a little weird - for these hurricanes? In the Atlantic, storms are named by the World Meteorological Organization. They alternate boys' and girls' names (without the letters Q,U,X,Y, and Z) in a six-year rotation. The first name alternates between boys' and girls' names every other year (Alex, Bonnie 2004, Arlene, Bret 2005). Names like Ophelia and Odette pop up because three "O" names are pretty difficult to find, and names like Ernesto and Philippe are there to satisfy the Hispanic and Haitian populations in the Atlantic. I think we should follow the Australians and name them after politicians - a lot of wind, they go in circles, and who knows what they'll mess up next?
I'm a born and raised Floridian. I went through Andrew in 1992 and later moved to the other coast, where Charley ripped us a new one last year. I've been through dozens of others, but these were the big ones.
But what really causes such a destructive phenomenon? Meteorology 101, here we go: A tropical wave is a baby hurricane, which comes off the African coast usually sometime between June and November. As a bratty toddler it becomes a tropical depression, with winds of 38 mph or less. When it reaches its surly adolescence it is a tropical storm - 39 to 73 mph - which can cause a lot of damage but generally isn't tried as an adult. The Al Capone of tropical storms is a hurricane, with sustained winds of 74 mph and up. A little more than twice that makes a Category 5 storm, strong enough to destroy absolutely everything in its path. Stick your head out of a car going 75 mph and that's the lowest degree of hurricane. Like, whoa.
Where do they get the names - sometimes cosmopolitan, sometimes a little weird - for these hurricanes? In the Atlantic, storms are named by the World Meteorological Organization. They alternate boys' and girls' names (without the letters Q,U,X,Y, and Z) in a six-year rotation. The first name alternates between boys' and girls' names every other year (Alex, Bonnie 2004, Arlene, Bret 2005). Names like Ophelia and Odette pop up because three "O" names are pretty difficult to find, and names like Ernesto and Philippe are there to satisfy the Hispanic and Haitian populations in the Atlantic. I think we should follow the Australians and name them after politicians - a lot of wind, they go in circles, and who knows what they'll mess up next?