What should people know about hurricanes

Southern Louisiana during hurricane Katrina. Hurricanes are really, really huge storms — hurricane Sandy in was 1, kilometres in diameter! They start out over the warm ocean water, rotating around an eye, which is the centre of the storm and the calmest part. As hurricanes rotate, they gather heat and energy from the warm ocean water and can spiral anywhere from kilometres per hour to kilometres per hour. As they travel slowly across the ocean, they get bigger until they encounter land. Tropical storm Francis in , just before it became a hurricane.

Taken off a US Navy fuel ship. Just minutes after this photo, the waves were close to 3 metres high. The Spanish explorers picked up the word from the indigenous people of the Caribbean in the 16th century. This can happen with hurricanes, too, and makes them very unpredictable. Some hurricanes have sat over the same area for a couple days or have done loops and meandered around for almost a month before making landfall on a coast.

Barbara McNaught Watson. Q: When was the first hurricane ever recorded by meteorologists? Where was it? A: The earliest records of hurricane encounters come from Christopher Columbus. He experienced the fringes of a hurricane in , when he neared Hispaniola.

Records in the early settlements in Virginia in the s and s talk of great hurricanes that caused the level of the Chesapeake Bay to rise 12 to 16 feet in what is known as the storm surge. But these records did not come from meteorologists. Benjamin Franklin was one of the country's first meteorologists.

Thomas Jefferson and George Washington also kept good weather records. The United States has kept track of hurricane paths since The Army Signal Corps monitored the weather until the birth of the U. Weather Bureau, which later became the National Weather Service in Back in the s, much of our information came from ships that traveled to and from the Caribbean.

The first recorded hurricane in formed near the Florida Keys and moved west into Texas. Of the six storms that year, four of them affected Florida and Georgia.

Q: What is the difference between a hurricane and a tornado? A: Hurricanes start over warm ocean water. The water acts as a source of energy waiting to be activated by a storm front or an upper level disturbance a front above the surface.

Hurricanes start over the oceans and die once they move over land, although they can do a lot of damage even as they weaken. Hurricanes are very, very large. Tornadoes are much smaller events, usually lasting only a short time and covering only a small area, but they are very, very violent winds.

Tornadoes need the collision of very warm moist air and very dry cold air and some upper level winds to act like a chimney to move energy away from the storm. A tornado starts as a thunderstorm and then turns into a funnel cloud. A hurricane starts as a bunch of clouds that spin around and turn into a tropical storm. They both can start over water, and both of them have eyes.

Q: Which is more dangerous, a hurricane or a tornado? A: Deciding whether a tornado or a hurricane is more dangerous is difficult. They are both very powerful, but hurricanes are much much bigger and so they do far more damage. I guess I would say, then, that a hurricane is worse than a tornado. Q: How long does it take for a bad storm to turn into a tornado or hurricane? Please Contact Us. Safety National Program. Hurricane Safety Tips and Resources Weather.

Hurricane Resources. Hurricane Hazards While hurricanes pose the greatest threat to life and property, tropical storms and depression also can be devastating. Storm surge is the abnormal rise of water generated by a storm's winds. This hazard is historically the leading cause of hurricane related deaths in the United States. Most hurricanes occur harmlessly out at sea. However, when they move towards land they can be incredibly dangerous and cause serious damage. The strong spiraling winds of a hurricane can reach speeds of up to kmph — strong enough to rip up entire trees and destroy buildings!

In the southern hemisphere, hurricanes rotate in a clockwise direction, and in the northern hemisphere they rotate in an anti-clockwise direction. This is when the high winds drive the sea toward the shore, causing water levels to rise and creating large crashing waves.

Storm surges can reach 6m high and extend to over km!