Big Blue Disk 3/bbd03.zip/HURRICAN.TXT

Text File | 1986-11-17 | 4KB | 68 lines

^C^1Hurricane Tracker
^CBy B. J. Fontenot and James Weiler


While tornadoes, which can have wind speeds of over 300 miles per hour, may be
thought of as the most violent kind of storm, twisters are usually short-lived,
localized phenomena. Much larger and more powerful by far are hurricanes, the
huge spiraling weather systems that develop over warm ocean water in the
tropics.

Unlike tornadoes which are not usually over a few hundred feet in diameter, a
typical hurricane can be 375 miles across with winds spiraling into the calm
"eye" at sustained speeds of over 74 miles per hour.  (If sustained wind speeds
fall below 74 mph, a storm's status is downgraded from that of a hurricane to
that of a "tropical storm.")  Hurricane winds can, however, gust to speeds
close to 200 miles per hour.

In addition to high winds, hurricanes carry torrential rains.  Some regions
struck by hurricanes have recorded as much as 40 or 50 inches of rain in a day.
Indeed, between the heavy rains and much higher than normal tides raised by a
hurricane's winds, it is not surprising that most deaths attributed to
hurricanes are caused by flooding.

Although a number of special conditions are necessary for hurricane formation,
their basic requirements are warmth and moisture.  Hurricanes develop only in a
band between five and twenty degrees latitude, both north and south of the
equator -- or where the ocean temperature is greater than 80 degrees
Fahrenheit.  Warm seas are the source of a hurricane's energy: when a hurricane
passes over cool surface water or over land, it quickly loses its energy and
dies -- unless its path takes it back to warm waters where it can regenerate.

You can think of a hurricane as a giant heat engine.  While a hurricane is
above warm water, an enormous amount of water evaporates into the atmosphere.
When this water vapor condenses to form the towering clouds associated with
hurricanes, a tremendous amount of heat is released into the atmosphere.  (Some
of this latent heat goes into the hurricane's eye, making it around five
degrees hotter than the surrounding storm, thus keeping it dry and free from
clouds.)

How much heat energy is produced within a hurricane?  Some authorities
calculate that some 10 trillion kilowatt-hours are produced per day within a
hurricane -- or about a thousand times the total amount of electrical power
generated in the United States.

Hurricane Tracker
-----------------
Because of their tremendous power, hurricanes have long been objects of both
fear and curiosity.  During huricane season (summer and fall in the Northern
hemisphere), many weather watchers like to plot the erratic course of
hurricanes as they develop near the equator and migrate westward.

HURRICANE TRACKER is designed to keep track of hurricanes that occur in the
Gulf of Mexico.  By using the storm's latitude and longitude provided by the
Weather Service, the user can enter the data and see the storm track plotted
across a hi-res map of the Gulf States and Mexico.

While area Hurricane Tracker covers may be limited, it can plot many of the
hurricanes that threaten costal cities and affect the entire country's weather.
And hopefully, the program will spur your interest in this most powerful, and
most interesting, of storms.

(We have provided a sample data file that will plot hurricane Camille for you.)


DISK FILES THIS PROGRAM USES:
^FHURRICAN.EXE
^FHUR.DAT   { Data on hurricane being tracked. }