|
HURRICANES = THE vaayu-DEv = WIND GOD'S WREATH ON CREATION.....KNOW THE SCIENCE OF HURRICANES Posted by Vishva News Reporter on September 2, 2005 |

Please click
here
to read about
Hurricane Katrina
on Wikipedia, the free on-line encyclopedia
Disaster estimate of Katrina:
-
PROPERTY DAMAGE: $10 to 25 billion
(insured damage reported so far), $20 to 100 billion (projected:likely to be
the most expensive Atlantic hurricane of all time: CNN reported on
September 2, 2005 that damages to New Orleans alone will exceed 100
billion)
-
FATALITIES: 1029 direct, 260
indirect, and likely more; could be the deadliest Atlantic hurricane of
all time.
-
AREAS AFFECTED: extreme destruction
in Mississippi, Alabama, and Louisiana (especially Greater New Orleans);
strong impact on Florida; also affected Texas, Arkansas, Georgia,
Tennessee, and many other eastern U.S. states, eastern Ontario and eastern
Quebec, Canada, and the Bahamas
|

PVAF PRAYS
FOR ALL WHOSE LIVES HAVE BEEN DEVASTATED BY
HURRICANE KATRINA
IN FLORIDA, USA, AUGUST 29, 2005

Hurricane Katrina with winds of 160 mph
on August 29, 2005 |
HOW, WHY AND WHAT OF
A HURRICANE
An average hurricane releases energy equal to a million
Little Boy atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima. The explosion was the
equivalent of 12.5 kilotons of TNT and killed about 125,00 people and
destroyed the entire city. Katrina was even
more powerful, and the record-setting season has only just begun.
The formation of a hurricane requires about 100 million tons of water vapour
(100 billion litres of liquid water) per hour. It takes the equivalent of
the energy released by 50 megatons of TNT to evaporate that much water.
That's per hour, mind you. In a day, trillions of litres of water are taken
up into the atmosphere as vapour, requiring the equivalent of more than a
thousand megatons of energy.
The average rain cloud holds about 300,000 tons or the equivalent of 300
million litres of water. The amount of energy required to evaporate all this
water is equal to almost 200 kilotons of TNT, or 15 Hiroshima bombs.
If what goes up must come down, then all the energy taken up through the
evaporation of water must come down again. And it does -- as the violent
winds and torrential rains that make hurricanes so massively destructive.
Hurricane power is classified as Categories 1 to 5. For
detailed description of the damage that hurricane Categories 1 to 5 causes
go to the end of the next page of this news item....
The present hurricane season has really only just begun. The most intense
part is still to come.
|
Hurricane Category:
Category 1: Winds 74-95 mph (64-82 kt or 119-153 km/hr)
Category 2: Winds 96-110 mph (83-95 kt or 154-177 km/hr)
Category 3: Winds 111-130 mph (96-113 kt or 178-209 km/hr)
Category 4: Winds 131-155 mph (114-135 kt or 210-249 km/hr)
Category 5: Winds greater than 155 mph (135 kt or 249 km/hr)
Five deadliest hurricanes:
1. Bangladesh (1970): 500,000 deaths
2. China (1881), 300,000
3. Haiphong, Vietnam (1881), 300,000
4. Bengal, India (1737), 300,000
5. Bangladesh (1876), 250,000The five costliest
hurricanes of the Atlantic Ocean (in 2004 U.S.
dollars):
1. Great Miami Hurricane (1926, Category 4):$70-billion
2. Andrew (1992, Category 5): $26.5-billion
3. Charley (2004, Category 4): $15-billion
4. Ivan (2004, Category 3): $14.2-billion
5. Frances (2004, Category 2):$9-billion
Information for damage figures from the National Hurricane Center and the
Hurricane Research Division of Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological
Laboratory. |
Please click on the next line to read about the natural power
of hurricane from Professor
Siegfried Betterman......
|
A HURRICANE IS A 13,000 MEGATON BOMB
EQUAL TO ONE MILLION ATOMIC BOMBS
DROPPED ON HIROSHIMA
Canadian
Globe and Mail: Saturday, September 3, 2005
Page F8: By
Siegfried Betterman
The 2005 hurricane season made it into the record books from the outset,
taking the title for the greatest number of tropical storms at the start of
a season, four in the first month. It also set the record for the most
intense start. Dennis, at the beginning of July, was the earliest Category 4
hurricane since measurements were introduced; normally, storms of that
intensity strike much later.
And now "much later" has come much sooner than expected in the devastating
guise of Katrina -- a Category 5 hurricane, the most intense of all. It is
the deadliest hurricane to hit the United States since Camille in 1969 and
very likely will be the most destructive and costly of all time.
What's ahead will probably set even more records. The U.S. National Oceanic
and Atmospheric Administration predicts double the number of tropical storms
(as many as 21 compared with the average of 10) and as many as 11 hurricanes
(almost double the average of six).
The extraordinary meteorological fury of the 2004 season, followed by this
year's unprecedented destruction, makes up what the NOAA calls "above
normal" activity. This is not understatement. In fact, we are simply in a
cyclical period of increased hurricane activity that began in 1995.
What we are experiencing is the result of a change in ocean and atmospheric
conditions called the Atlantic Multidecadal Mode. This is "a North Atlantic
and Caribbean sea surface temperature shift between warm and cool phases
that lasts 25 to 40 years each," the NOAA says.
The last cycle of "above normal" activity occurred in late 1920s to the late
1960s. It was during this period that legendary Hurricane Hazel swept into
Ontario, devastating Toronto and causing the deaths of 81 people.
But what's normal for a hurricane season? And what's normal for a hurricane?
These cyclopean pinwheels vent such enormous quantities of energy that the
only way to get a grip on what's normal is to turn to what's not normal.
Arguably, the best measure available is the megaton weaponry of nuclear
warfare.
It is just past 60 years since the atomic bomb dubbed Little Boy was
detonated over the Japanese city of Hiroshima. So devastating was the
explosion that it stands as the benchmark of humanity's horrific potential
for destruction.
The bomb left a 150-metre-wide crater below the point of detonation and
destroyed about 60,000 buildings over six square kilometres. Eighty-five
thousand lives were instantly obliterated; 55,000 others were lost after
months of suffering the effects of the atomic blast.
That explosion was the equivalent of 12.5 kilotons of TNT, enough to fill
200 freight cars stretching down two kilometres of railway track.
However, in terms of the devastating power of hurricanes, Little Boy was as
nothing at all.
Of course, hurricanes don't pack all of their destructive force into a
bomb's narrow confines of space and time. They mete it out over an area that
is, typically, one million square kilometres -- the size of Ontario or South
Africa -- and over the course of days.
Still, the most intense activity is concentrated at the wall that rings the
eye of the hurricane, which can be 20 to 100 kilometres across.
From above, torrential rains pelt down as much as 2.5 metres of water in a
single day. From below, a storm surge whipped by violent waves can raise the
height of bodies of water by as much as nine metres and pull the sea inland
by 16 kilometres. In between, winds tear at everything in their path at
speeds of up to 289 kilometres per hour.
Farther out from the eye, conditions are less intense, but violent
nonetheless and capable of enormous destruction even at the outer fringes of
a fierce storm.
|
Taken over the entire cloud shield of an "average" hurricane, the energy
released daily in the form of rain and wind is the equivalent of about
13,000 megatons -- almost equal to the destructive potential of all the
weapons in the Cold War missile silos in the United States and the former
Soviet Union. That's a million Hiroshima bombs exploded at a rate of more
than 10 a second -- 20 Little Boys for each of the 50,000 (estimated) cities
on the planet.
The source of all this energy is truly unremarkable and innocuous. It's what
causes water ring stains on the cherished coffee table: evaporation.
Essentially, hurricanes are colossal heat engines that balance the heat
contained in the atmosphere with that in the ocean. They do this, simply
enough, by taking up energy in the form of water vapour from tropical
surface waters and making the air hotter and more humid.
If it seems an extraordinary thing that something as
ordinary as the evaporation of water could drive anything as powerful as
hurricanes, consider the amount of energy that is involved in the
evaporation of even small volumes of water.
To raise the temperature of a 1.5-litre bottle of water by just one degree
Celsius requires little enough -- the energy used by a 100-watt bulb in just
one minute will do it. This is so even when the rise in temperature is from
99 degrees to the boiling point.
However, taking water at 100 degrees from liquid form to vapour takes a lot
more energy -- 6,000 times more. It takes so much more, in fact, that the
energy needed to evaporate 1.5 litres is as much as the energy released by
one kilogram of TNT.
The average rain cloud holds about 300,000 tons or the equivalent of 300
million litres of water. The amount of energy required to evaporate all this
water is equal to almost 200 kilotons of TNT, or 15 Hiroshima bombs.
The formation of a hurricane requires about 100 million tons of water vapour
(100 billion litres of liquid water) per hour. It takes the equivalent of
the energy released by 50 megatons of TNT to evaporate that much water.
That's per hour, mind you. In a day, trillions of litres of water are taken
up into the atmosphere as vapour, requiring the equivalent of more than a
thousand megatons of energy.
If what goes up must come down, then all the energy taken up through the
evaporation of water must come down again. And it does -- as the violent
winds and torrential rains that make hurricanes so massively destructive.
In the course of a season, over the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian Oceans, the
destructive energy released by hurricanes is staggering. On average, there
are 45 hurricanes a year for a total of about 450 hurricane days. Together,
they amount to the equivalent of almost five million megatons of TNT. More
than 3,000 times the Cold War nuclear arsenal. Almost 400 million Hiroshima
bombs. Annually.
But a hurricane's destructiveness is not about energy alone. In fact, the
most destructive hurricanes are not necessarily the most intense. Of the
five costliest hurricanes of all time in the Atlantic, only one was
classified as Category 5.
More important is where a hurricane makes landfall, that is, where the eye
of the hurricane crosses from water onto land. When this happens in
populated and developed areas, economic damage soars. Last year, Hurricanes
Charley, Ivan, Frances and Jeanne inflicted a collective economic toll in
excess of $40-billion (U.S.).
However, the deadliest of hurricanes have not struck the United States. Of
the 45 hurricanes that occur in the average year, only six take place over
the Atlantic. The majority strike the Indian and Pacific Oceans.
The worst Atlantic death toll was the Great Hurricane of 1780, which caused
as many as 30,000 deaths in the Caribbean.
This figure is overwhelmed, all too often, by the number of deaths in the
Pacific and Indian Oceans. Over these bodies of water, hurricanes (referred
to as cyclones) that make landfall in highly populated areas have caused
hundreds of thousands of deaths. Most catastrophic of all was a 1970 cyclone
that killed 500,000 people in Bangladesh.
The present hurricane season has really only just begun. The most intense
part is still to come.
Siegfried Betterman, a freelance journalist and former professor of
mathematics at George Brown College in Toronto, is writing a book on the
extremes of magnitude entitled Taking Measure.
|
Hurricane Rating System
( The Saffir Simpson Scale)
The Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Scale is a 1-5 rating
reflacting the hurricane's present intensity and is used to help give an
estimate of the potential property damage and flooding which can be expected
from a hurricane landfall. Wind speed is the determining factor in the
scale.
Category One Hurricane:
Category One Hurricane:
Winds 74-95 mph (64-82 kt or 119-153 km/hr). Storm surge
generally 4-5 ft above normal. No real damage to building structures. Damage
primarily to unanchored mobile homes, shrubbery, and trees. Some damage to
poorly constructed signs. Also, some coastal road flooding and minor pier
damage.
Category Two Hurricane:
Winds 96-110 mph (83-95 kt or 154-177 km/hr). Storm surge generally 6-8 feet
above normal. Some roofing material, door, and window damage of buildings.
Considerable damage to shrubbery and trees with some trees blown down.
Considerable damage to mobile homes, poorly constructed signs, and piers.
Coastal and low-lying escape routes flood 2-4 hours before arrival of the
hurricane center. Small craft in unprotected anchorages break moorings.
Category Three Hurricane:
Winds 111-130 mph (96-113 kt or 178-209 km/hr). Storm surge generally 9-12
ft above normal. Some structural damage to small residences and utility
buildings with a minor amount of curtainwall failures. Damage to shrubbery
and trees with foliage blown off trees and large trees blown down. Mobile
homes and poorly constructed signs are destroyed. Low-lying escape routes
are cut by rising water 3-5 hours before arrival of the center of the
hurricane. Flooding near the coast destroys smaller structures with larger
structures damaged by battering from floating debris. Terrain continuously
lower than 5 ft above mean sea level may be flooded inland 8 miles (13 km)
or more. Evacuation of low-lying residences with several blocks of the
shoreline may be required.
Category Four Hurricane:
Winds 131-155 mph (114-135 kt or 210-249 km/hr). Storm surge generally 13-18
ft above normal. More extensive curtainwall failures with some complete roof
structure failures on small residences. Shrubs, trees, and all signs are
blown down. Complete destruction of mobile homes. Extensive damage to doors
and windows. Low-lying escape routes may be cut by rising water 3-5 hours
before arrival of the center of the hurricane. Major damage to lower floors
of structures near the shore. Terrain lower than 10 ft above sea level may
be flooded requiring massive evacuation of residential areas as far inland
as 6 miles (10 km).
Category Five Hurricane:
Winds greater than 155 mph (135 kt or 249 km/hr). Storm surge generally
greater than 18 ft above normal. Complete roof failure on many residences
and industrial buildings. Some complete building failures with small utility
buildings blown over or away. All shrubs, trees, and signs blown down.
Complete destruction of mobile homes. Severe and extensive window and door
damage. Low-lying escape routes are cut by rising water 3-5 hours before
arrival of the center of the hurricane. Major damage to lower floors of all
structures located less than 15 ft above sea level and within 500 yards of
the shoreline. Massive evacuation of residential areas on low ground within
5-10 miles (8-16 km) of the shoreline may be required.
|
|
There are 0 additional comments.
Send your news items
to be posted to news@prajapati-samaj.ca.
|