Hurricane Seasons

The hurricane season begins in early summer and lasts until late fall. Hurricane seasons are a time when atmospheric conditions can create violent and devastating storms that originate over water, but sometimes move onto land. During this time, temperature, wind, moisture and other factors converge in just the right way to create massive, spiraling storms that can destroy nearly everything in their path. The official dates for the hurricane season are June first to November thirtieth. Ninety seven percent of hurricanes occur during these months.

Hurricane season can sometimes last longer than projected because hurricanes occur outside of these dates. When this happens, the cause is usually a longer period of tropical weather than normal. The majority of the hurricanes happen within the month of September usually.

In the Atlantic region, the hurricane season lasts specifically from August through October. In the Northeast Pacific region, hurricane seasons stretch from May until November. In the Northwest Pacific region however, hurricane seasons last throughout the year.
Hurricanes, also called tropical cyclones. For these to occur during hurricane seasons, they must form in warm ocean water, which is why cyclone activity is highest during the summer and fall seasons. Because ocean water warms and cools slowly, it is not yet warm enough in the spring to generate the necessary heat to fuel the storm. Once the summer heat warms the water, the heat is retained throughout the fall, accounting for the wide space of time in which hurricanes seasons can and do last.

The Hurricane season is very unpredictable. Sometimes a hurricane season is active, and sometimes it is not so active. There is never a way of knowing how badly hurricane season may affect the world as a whole. The different types. of tropical storms make for different results. A basic hurricane will produce strong winds and rainfall capable of minimum flooding and damage. Then there are hurricanes like that of hurricane Katrina that produce massive amounts of windfall and rainfall. The hurricane season in which this hurricane took place, was not a very active one. However, with the falling of this hurricane, massive amounts of damage was done. Another reason this hurricane was so damaging is because the proper precautionary steps were not taken prior. During hurricane seasons storms like these are categorized by rating. A rating can range from a category one all the way to a category five storm. The basis for these groupings are determined the amount of wind, rain, and the speed a storm is moving with when it hits the land. Landfall of a hurricane is the most important part of the storm because once a hurricane hits the land it begins to slow down and deteriorate. If a hurricane has reached a high speed right before making landfall, the damage to the land that is hit will be greater. This is why areas closest to the coasts get hit the hardest during hurricane season. The areas inland usually receive the aftermath of a hurricane damage from an area more off the coast. Hurricane seasons are all together scary, this is mostly because they are unpredictable. However, many barriers are in place to protect people in the worst case of scenarios.

Hurricane Watch

If a hurricane watch issued for a certain area it is an indication that there is a possibility that a given area could experience hurricane conditions within thirty six hours. This hurricane watch can trigger a family evacuation plan. Hurricane plans should be thorough an communicated to everyone involved. Everyone in the family should be advised of such plans to ensure that everyone is safe. Additionally, other people that will not be with accompanying the family in the evacuation should be aware of the evacuation plan as well. During a Hurricane watch this is extremely important just in case anyone is hurt or lost in the process. anyone is lost or hurt in the process.
A hurricane tracker is what the news channels use to keep the public informed. A hurricane tracker is a device that can be viewed on a weather website, news website, or on TV during, after, and before a storm. This device is extremely important because this is how the status of a storm or hurricane is updated on a daily basis. Updates on hurricane tracker indicate when a storm will be at its worst, and when the storm will slow down. This device also allows the meteorologists to keep track of multiple hurricanes at one time during a hurricane watch. A hurricane tracker is most useful when depicting the exact location of a storm. For example a weather man may be able to inform the public of whether the location of a storm may change or if a new area will eventually be hit by the storm. This is particularly useful in regards to evacuation routes and shelters. Some routes may not be safe if the storm starts moving along it. Some shelters may also become dangerous if a storm is headed right for it. A Hurricane tracker can be viewed online for any region of the country. Whereas when in a particular area, television stations primarily show the weather updates for that area, and track a storm for that area or areas surrounding. However, if there is a need to view hurricanes in an area far from the one a person may be in, the Internet is the place to go.

A hurricane watch can be used strictly for precautionary purposes, or in case of a real hurricane. The majority of the time the hope is for these types of warnings to be strictly precautionary. Certain regions of the country are on a hurricane watch during its season more than others. Florida for example is the most widely affected by hurricanes. This has to do with the location of the state on the map. Most states or regions that are along a coast get hit hardest with hurricanes. Another state that is on hurricane watch quite often during the hurricane season is the Massachusetts. Located in the New England area, and right off the coast, places a state like Massachusetts right in the hurricane zone. Hurricanes can be brutal, and it is very important, no matter what region a person lives in, to take a hurricane watch seriously.

Hurricane Preparation

Hurricane preparedness is the actions and planning taken before a hurricane, tropical storm, cyclone, or tsunami strikes to avoid damage and injury from the storm. Hurricane preparedness may involve preparations made by individuals, families, cities, states, and governments or other organizations. Hurricane preparation is very important, and if done correctly can save a lot of peoples lives. There are many things people and organizations can do to protect themselves from harm during a storm.

The most important decision in individual hurricane preparedness is determining if and when to evacuate an area that will be affected by a storm. Evacuation plans should be thorough and communicated clearly to everyone involved. It is very important that the entire family or group be included in hurricane preparation. If there is a place to evacuate, it is crucial that close friends and family be informed of the plan as well. This will work just in case people are unable to find individuals after the storm has passed. If evacuation is not possible or necessary, other forms of hurricane preparation include storing supplies, securing a home against extreme winds and rain, and making plans with family and friends prior to the storms rainfall..
Hurricane preparedness kits should include bottled water, canned food, first aid kits, prescription medications, waterproof flashlights and radios, a whistle or other sound-signaling device, identification and medical cards, any necessary medical records, waterproof bags or portable waterproof containers, and other supplies helpful in a survival situation.

Hurricane Preparedness also may include planned shelter routes to ensure safety. Evacuation to hurricane shelters is an option that should be used as a last resort. Shelter space is first come first serve and only intended to preserve human life. Buildings designated as shelters are built to hold a certain number of people at a time. Shelters are expected to protect occupants from wind and water only. Shelters should be considered a major part of hurricane preparation.
Hurricane preparation policies make buildings and other infrastructure more resistant to the effects of tropical cyclones. All other buildings, whether residential or commercial, are vulnerable to damage from storms. Additionally, the internal contents of these buildings can be damaged as result of exposure to water if the building is breached, as a result of the strong winds.
Hurricane preparedness is more important in certain areas. Any area off a coast is more likely to be hit by hurricanes or storms during hurricane season. Florida is a state that get hit hard every hurricane season, due to their location. Hurricane preparation is second nature to many of the residence in the Florida cities, and towns. Other regions affected by hurricanes include, New England, Texas, California, Virginia, etc…Government agencies in these areas have evacuation routes for the citizens to follow, as well as protective levy’s to prevent flooding. Hurricane preparation may seen like another preventative tactic that takes up to much time and thought. Although it may be true that preventative methods such as these are extremely cautious, these same measures will save lives when they are needed most.

Hurricane damage

The intensity of a hurricane is measured by the highest sustained wind speed found within it. Once a storm becomes a hurricane, some form of hurricane damage is guaranteed. The strength of that hurricane is also measured on a scale based on its greatest wind speed. This scale is named the Saffir-Simpson scale for the men who invented it. Depending on the level a hurricane falls on the scale, the hurricane effects can result in the loss off of life, property, or land. Another cause is the flooding resulting from the coastal storm surge of the ocean and the massive rainfall, The scale is used as the standard scale for rating the severity of a hurricane, and used to measured the hurricane damage it causes. It ranges from category 1 (minimal), category 2 (moderate), category 3 (extensive), category 4 (extreme), and category 5 (catastrophic). A super typhoon is equivalent to a category 4 or 5 hurricane. The hurricane effects for a category 4 or 5 almost always accompanied with massive death tolls, and millions of dollars in hurricane damage.

With hurricanes being as powerful as they are, it is not surprising that upon landfall they cause damage and destruction. Even when the hurricane has yet to make landfall, its hurricane effects can be dangerous. Most of the damage caused to man and nature occur as a hurricane makes landfall. Strong winds are the most common reasons for destruction. The hurricane effects can range from , uprooted trees, collapsed buildings and homes, fling and deadly debris, sunken ground or boats, and flipped cars.
Another major cause of hurricane damage is storm surge. Storm surge is the rising of the sea level due to the changing wind pressures, and high waves associated with a hurricane as it makes landfall. The storm surge can cause hurricane effects like, significant flooding and unexpected death.

Often tornadoes occur in heavy rain storms causing significant hurricane damage. The rain fall makes them difficult, if not impossible, to see. Advances in radar technology have given the public more lead time than before, but these twisters are still very dangerous and can catastrophic hurricane effects. Tornado’s create paths of damage ranging for miles and miles. The hurricane effects from a tornado are guaranteed, and houses are ripped out of the ground, people are tossed into the spirals, and animals, and property as well. During a tornado land can and usually permanently damaged to pressure in the ground. Many protective measures have been put in place to protect people from tornado’s. It is best to be underground under sold foundation, so that if a house or building is ripped open, the people seeking shelter in will not get taken away by the rapid winds. Unfortunately during this type of storm, animals and property cannot always be protected, and are usually lost. Hurricane effects differ just like the Saffir-Simpson scale does, the more intense of a storm, the more intense the damage caused typically is. Regardless of what the level of a storm all precautions must be met to ensure safety of people as a whole.

Hurricane Facts

Hurricanes can constitute serious threats the safety and well-being of coastal areas susceptible to the effects of meteorological disturbances. For residents of coastal areas where hurricanes can be a threatening reality, being well appraised of hurricane facts can be an effective tool for maximizing efforts to avoid the threatening effects of hurricanes and assuring themselves of safety. As yet the gathering of hurricane facts by scientists involved in studying them as meteorological phenomena has not produced many preventive methods for actively decreasing the power and intensity of a hurricane event. A useful hurricane fact is more likely to provide some indication as how to respond to the potential threat posed by the imminent landfall of a storm, and also possibly some contextual understanding of the ramifications of living in an area that might be unusually vulnerable to the arrival of hurricanes. One hurricane fact that can give a sense of the degree of the threat posed by a storm as contrasted with the limitations of the effects it can have. Hurricane facts related to the dissipation of these phenomena are thus useful tools for the residents of coastal areas.

An essential point made by hurricane facts is that the scientific categorization and understanding of these storms is rooted in a view of them as being essentially tropical. A hurricane can be considered as such by lieu of exhibiting tropical characteristics, and the hurricane fact of dissipation occurs when the storm is deprived of these tropical features. Residents preparing for the effect of hurricane landfall should be aware of the hurricane fact that these storms will dissipate if by moving over land they are deprived of the warm water which provides them with energy. A study of hurricane facts will show the usual trend for storms to lose their essential characteristics in a day or two after moving over land. In the area of hurricane facts related to safety, mountainous areas can be particularly dangerous when confronted by hurricanes due to the rapid weakening process they trigger in these areas. In the process of disintegrating, hurricanes release vast quantities of water over the area below and thus have the potential to cause great loss of life in these periods.

A related hurricane fact relates to this phenomenon and stems from the same basic need of a hurricane for some source of warm water. Rather than disintegrating over land, hurricanes can break apart upon reaching sections of ocean that are filled with water existing at a temperature that is far below 26.5 °C (79.7 °F). After this process of disintegration, the newly cooled hurricane will become a remnant low-pressure area, which possesses the capability to last in this state for a period of several days. These hurricane facts illuminating one manner in which they can halted has proven interesting to scientists and government officials with ambitions for finding artificial methods for stopping hurricanes. This hurricane fact was implemented in the 1970s U.S. government program Project Stormfury, which proved, however, unsuccessful in its use of silver iodide seeding.

National Hurricane Centers

The practice of assigning human first names as the designations for hurricanes is a seemingly whimsical but helpful method for disseminating method about these potentially very harmful meteorological phenomena. Because of the necessity on the part of a hurricane center of informing people as to the severity and proximity of hurricanes, easily remembered monikers that mimic human naming practices can be a boon for the transmission of information by both formal and informal methods through the large population served by a hurricane center. This practice is relatively new in the currently ordered manifestation it takes. It dates back to 1953, when the idea of naming hurricanes in the manner of humans was first implemented by the National Hurricane Center. Today this measure stands as an important component of the National Hurricane Center’s contribution to weather awareness.

The National Hurricane Center is located in Miami, Florida and has existed since 1898, when it was created on the orders of President McKinley. Prior to the regularization of the hurricane naming process which the Hurricane Center enacted, hurricanes had been assigned feminine names during World War II by broadcasters for purposes of convenience and generally in an ad hoc fashion, in which an informally agreed-upon coinage would become widely accepted. In the early 1950s measures were put into place to place the naming of storms on a regular basis. At first, from 1950 to 1952, experiments were made by the National Hurricane Center to use the designations supplied from the phonetic alphabet that are widely known for their military usage. In 1953, the decision was made by Hurricane Center authorities to replace this system with one based on assigned the first names of women to hurricanes. The National Hurricane Center’s decision in regard to gender stemmed from the common practice in English of speaking of inanimate objects as “she,” and was maintained by the Hurricane Center until 1979, when, in response to the complaints made that this practice constituted a subtle form of sexism, it was decided by National Hurricane Center authorities to adopt the new practice of alternating feminine and masculine names on a yearly basis.

This year also marked the start of the Hurricane Center practice of preparing a list of prospective hurricane names before the season began. As has traditionally been the case, names are assigned to storms in alphabetical order, according to in which order they come in the year. In reference to the culturally predominant languages of the regions accessible to Atlantic hurricanes, the standard has been set by the Hurricane Center to assign names of French, Spanish and English provenance to the storms. Responsibility for the naming of storms no longer belongs to the National Hurricane Center but has been adopted by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), which among other functions performs the task of retiring hurricane names, which usually occurs when the storms they were named for proved to be exceptionally destructive. The WMO meets either every year or every other year.

Hurricane Gustav

Coming three years after the devastating effects of Hurricane Katrina on New Orleans and nearby Gulf Coast regions, the impending arrival of Hurricane Gustav in the same area in 2008 raised concerns that similar misfortunes might befall the area comparable to the calamities that occurred during the first storm. These concerns over the imminence of Gustav were especially heightened by widespread criticism lobbed at the state and federal government responses made to Hurricane Katrina’s previous impact. With the United States presidential elections being prepared for in campaigns by prospective candidates, Presidential hopeful Barack Obama and John McCain kept the possible effects of Hurricane Gustav in mind as they monitored their public images. Likewise, the administration of President George W. Bush made early precautions to avoid drawing the same kind of criticism over its handling of Gustav as had occurred with Hurricane Katrina. Ultimately, in comparison to the long-lasting repercussions suffered from the landfall of Hurricane Katrina, the effects of Hurricane Gustav were less overtly disastrous. That being said, several dozen deaths and significant amounts of damage were suffered as a result of Gustav.

One response to the widespread criticisms elicited by the governmental handling of Hurricane Katrina was to begin evacuation efforts early on. At the point when Hurricane Gustav had only reached the point of Haiti, officials in the state of Louisiana began discussing plans for moving residents out of potentially affected areas. At first, New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin announced, on August 30, that residents of the city should start evacuating the area if it was possible for them. By the next day, mandatory evacuations had been ordered. In responding to the problems that had afflicted evacuation efforts during Katrina, different venues were chosen for the safe housing of evacuees, and evacuation materials were secured ahead of time in quantities estimated to be sufficient for meeting demand. Measures were also adopted for attempting to keep highways and other roads open for the passage of evacuees from Gustav.
The eventual results of Gustav’s landfall in New Orleans and elsewhere in Louisiana were, as had been hoped by planners for the response to the storm, less disastrous than those suffered from Hurricane Katrina.

In total, forty-eight deaths were blamed on Hurricane Gustav, with two deaths caused by a tornado that had been created by Gustav. Thirty-four parishes (the equivalents of counties for other states) were declared disaster areas by the Bush Administration, which subsequently dispatched the president to the areas in question in the interests of remedying lingering bad will from memories of the handling of Katrina. A major component of the previous storm’s devastating effect had been the breaching of levees, which thus was also a concern in preparing for the arrival of Gustav. Though water was splashed high enough to go over flood walls, it did not cause any breaches, which avoided a major cause of flooding. Recovery efforts proceeded quickly enough for the restoration of power to be effected and allow New Orleans’ official reopening on September 4.