Discussion»Statements»Rosie's Corner» Are there "hurricane alleys" or "hurricane lanes" that are known for the number of hurricanes that develop? Why live anywhere near them?
Are there "hurricane alleys" or "hurricane lanes" that are known for the number of hurricanes that develop? Why live anywhere near them?
If you must live on an island can't you find one that is tucked away somewhere safe from hurricanes or are all islands everywhere equally fraught with potential devastation? Is that like living at the bottom of an active volcano?
If there is it would be the east coast and the Gulf states and the islands.
Everyplace has something that the area is prone to suffer from. West coast has earthquakes, wild fires and mud slides. Heartland has tornadoes, east coast gets hurricanes.
Of course any of these things can accure anywhere in the country.
Oh my gosh! Ever see one of those dark funnels heading toward you? Do you have a cellar or something you go down into m2c? Like they show in the movies? Do they come in bunches? I've seen what they can do. They can pick up trucks and other heavy thing and toss them about. Very scary. Is there a season for them? Thank you for your reply! :)
I have seen some. I used to have a picture of a full sized trampoline in the a tree. We have bedrooms in the basement so if it were to get rough we go down there. I have never had tornado damage to a permanent structure (did have a temporary roof blown off...I slept through that) but know people who have. Tornado season is in the sprong and fall when weather changes rapidly.
This post was edited by my2cents at September 4, 2019 5:43 AM MDT
Wow! I can just imagine that. That's excellent. Bedrooms in the basement. When I was 3 we lived in Highland Park, Michigan a suburb of Detroit. Every home had a basement and an attic. In the basement my mom had shelves of canned pickles and fruits that she and her friends would "put up" every summer for use in the winter. There was a bunk bed down there and so I would do go downstairs with them and sit on the bed and color in my coloring book and watch and listen to the ladies chatting and sometimes fall asleep. I guess a basement or "storm cellar" is the best place to go when tornadoes are coming toward you. Thank you for your reply m2c. How did you sleep through the roof getting blown off? It must have been super noisy! :)
This post was edited by RosieG at September 4, 2019 5:52 AM MDT
It really wasn't noisy. It was a temp roof (we were building) that made a noise. It sounded like a tree branch hit the roof. A few hours later I realized that was the roof hitting the corner of the basement. Lol. Or I was really tired...I was working nights back then.
Not "alleys" but suitable areas of the world. Hurricanes and destructive cyclones (tornadoes) are tropical storms. Hurricanes need large expanses of warm oceans to feed them, but those affecting the Caribbean and the S.E. coast of America originate over the Sahara Desert and grow into hurricanes as they move Westwards across the Atlantic.
Similarly, the other disasters My2cents mentions are not fussy about nationality. They are physical-geography processes.
The most violent earthquakes are those associated with specific plate-tectonics processes; with the Pacific and Mediterranean coasts being the most active. (The tsunami and violently explosive volcanic eruptions in the same regions are also results of the same processes.)
Forest, heath and grass fires can occur almost anywhere, giving sufficiently dry weather, in tropical or temperate latitudes.
Mud slides, and land-slips generally, are a natural part of the erosion of hills and of river and coastal cliffs, although they can occur following human intervention such as over-steepening a slope to produce for example, road and railway cuttings.
Thank you for a very thoughtful and information-packed reply Durdle. I appreciate it. You know what popped out at me? That anything would "originate over the Sahara Desert". How is that possible?:)
Sorry - I missed the second question, why anyone chooses to live in naturally-hazardous areas. I don't know if anyone can answer that, though some such regions offer advantages that must outweigh the risks. It's possible that the same hazards had less serious outcomes in the past, due to the way the residents lived. In some places now, the risks and effects of natural hazards have been greatly increased by such intervention as removing mangrove swamps to build tourist developments.
One specific example I found is that of Louisiana, slowly sinking thanks to a combination of ground-water, oil and gas extraction and ironically, by loss of natural sediment deposition by the Mississippi's floods having been contained by dams and artificial levees designed to protect the area's towns from those floods. The figure I read was about 9mm/year, compounded by 3mm/yr sea-level rise, so an effective loss of altitude of 12mm (nearly half an inch) a year. The river is only trying to do what comes naturally to any large river, but there must surely come a point when the city and surrounding countryside become practically uninhabitable simply by more and more frequent flooding.
Weather systems are enormous "whirlpools" of air, so big that ambling across the ocean that spawns or supports them, is normal to them. Even the gentle temperate-zone anticyclones and depressions that cross the British Isles are often around 1000 miles in diameter.
I don't the meteorology in detail, but I have read that many hurricanes start life as potential thunderstorms triggered by hot air rising from the desert. If these drift Westwards they collect masses of extra heat energy and water vapour from the warm sea, gradually building the very powerful, deep, compact depression that is a hurricane.
(I think if they move East across the desert they gradually dissipate, but a peculiarity of hot-deserts is that their infrequent rain comes as short-lived but very intense downpours creating flash-floods.)
The oceans play an enormous part in the weather, and I learnt recently that parts of Western America are seeing more dust storms as the warming lower-latitude area of the Pacific increases atmospheric circulations bringing strong winds of cold, dry air from the North-West.
Thank you once again for providing so much "meat" on all these bones. OK. I get that it is the HOT AIR that moves and gathers heat energy which collects moisture and then does whatever it is going to do with it. Thanks for making it so simple and clear. As for oceans having such an effect on climate. I thought that would only be on the coasts of countries. Tide surges or Tsunamies or flooding like what happens in New Orleans. Not inland far away. As for Louisiana hasn't New Orleans always been below sea level? Isn't that why they are always getting flooded? Why would anyone want to live anywhere that is below sea level ON THE OCEAN FRONT? Makes no sense to me. As for incentives I read that once upon a time those who built homes on the coasts got some kind of financial incentives to do so. Defrayed costs or cost-sharing with the local gubment. That was before they figured out that was a dumb thing to do. Too soon old too late schmart. Of course while you aren't in jeopardy the views are magnificent. But if you end up underwater the view below isn't so not unless you are in a submarine or glass-enclosed vehicle. Thanks Durdle! :)
Heat is a form of energy. Temperature is the intensity but not amount, of that energy at any given point.
The climate is driven ultimately by heat from the Sun, so the greater the amount of heat, the higher the temperature and the more intense the weather.
Latitude's effect is to give a higher thickness of air for the heat to penetrate, with higher latitudes; and the atmosphere absorbs and scatters the energy, and reflects a good deal of it back into Space. So the higher the latitude the less heat reaches the ground and sea surface.
The warmer-latitude seas store an enormous amount of heat in their upper layers, moving it around in huge circulations; and evaporating a lot of water. The colder high-latitude seas can absorb a lot of heat, cooling the air above them and giving up less water vapour. These effects give weather extremes in tropical and polar regions, and blend to give more moderate weather in the temperate latitudes. The land too, absorbs a lot of heat and that warms the atmosphere above it; also creating large-scale convection currents.
It is these circulations and heat transfers from hotter to cooler, that give the weather.
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I've never understood why anyone would want to live in very hazardous areas.
Though the British Isles' climate and geology are relatively benign, parts of the country are quite crowded and building land now is at a premium. If you look at centuries-old British riverside towns, you see the original streets are all up on the valley sides or at least on slightly higher ground, because their builders knew from local experience how the river can behave. In fact the floods were often exploited agriculturally, by "water-meadows". There were fields allowed to flood in a controlled way, using artificial channels and sluices, over the Winter. The water insulated the soil from the deepest cold, and left behind fresh sediments rich in nutrients for the next Spring's plants. (Egypt did the same with the Nile, from ancient times till the 1950s' Aswan Dam stopped the river's natural behaviour.) This all became forgotten over time as the towns spread outwards onto the lower land, and in the last several decades many developers were granted planning-permission to site large housing-estates on known flood-plains, with a risk that did not affect them commercially, or necessitating extra work to try to protect the houses.
Another very popular area for housing in Britain (and many other countries) is the coast, and houses on cliff-tops are highly sought-after... Until the sea erodes the cliffs back so far that the property is endangered. For a long time, the usual approach was to build artificial protection at the foot of the cliff, but this is costly and tends only to buy time, possibly only in decades rather than possible centuries. It's now recognised that in some places, the only sensible solution to rapid erosion of cliffs formed in softer or weaker rocks is to move back inland and let Nature take its course.
Thank you once again Durdle for a very thoughtful helpful informative and educational reply. Is this your PASSION or you PROFESSION? In any case I appreciate the time you choose to invest in replying fully and thoughtfully to my questions. Happy Friday! :)
From outside looking in it seems much more to me than a "general" interest Durdle. Thank you for your reply. I think it would be great if we could all turn our passions into our professions. But some of us just don't have "the right stuff". For me it would be quantum physics but I do not have the brain to do it. I'm pretty sure. I so enjoy reading about new discoveries or new theories and though I don't always understand EVERYTHING I read about it I understand enough to enjoy it immensely. Happy Saturday m'dear! :)
When I was young I wanted to be either a Scientist or an Engineer.
I was inspired by my Dad, a Chartered Electrical Engineer who worked in that capacity as a scientist, but for the Ministry of Defence so I don't know what he actually did! Also to some extent by an uncle employed by the railway research & development laboratory owned by the then-British Railways; though again I don't know what sort of work he did.
Unfortunately both science, especially physics, and engineering are both deeply mathematical, and mathematics is one of my weakest subjects.
So I ended up working in various engineering trades at a semi-skilled, shop-floor level; and now enjoy science at a lay level, understanding its effects but not the deeper principles, and engineering as a creative craft hobby.
So higher math was your Achilles Heel then? I know physics is very mathematical but ALL Science is as well? I did not know that. I guess if you think about though it's logical. I don't have an engineering mind Durdle. My Jim does. What I have found is that he is not happy if something isn't working at its OPTIMAL level. Me? I almost never notice. If it does the job I need it to do adequately I'm perfectly content. I think having an engineer's mind is a blessing and a cross to bear. You know what should be or could be and keep striving to achieve that. I do that with WHAT IF and fantasy only. Real-World things? I honestly don't notice many things that are obvious to others. Jim says it's because my mind is always preoccupied with ideas and things going on so I can't pay attention to what's going on inside my head and also my surroundings as well. A loving excuse but I don't buy it. It's just a flaw or defect in me. I guess we all have them. Thank you for your thoughtful reply. When Carl Sagan was alive and wrote Cosmos and also hosted the show by that name my then 12-year-old son wanted to become a physicist. I think Sagan went to Cornell so that was a university we were thinking about for his future education. But time happened and he is Chair of his department at a university. Information and Computer Sciences. He LOVES it but the twelve-year-old boy wanted to be Carl Sagan. Me? Gosh Any physicist who deals with black holes and event horizons and parallel universes and multiple dimensions and quantum entanglement and and and.....would do just fine. There are many women in the field. I wish I could have been one of them.
Despite the erratic weather, those places are where the land is most suitable for farming. Flat, open and with sufficient rainfall. You take the good with the bad.
A crapshoot. Luck of the draw. Russian Roulette. I dunno R it just seems to me that some spots are more vulnerable than others to danger and people keep rebuilding after devastation. In the same spots. I know SAFE varies from time to time and place to place but living below sea level at a coast is something I would not do. Now if I were on a very high bluff overlooking the ocean I'd do that. In Santa Monica some areas are level with the ocean and homes are built at the same level as the ocean but there are some nifty cliffs where others live. A short walk to the stairway and you walk DOWN DOWN DOWN to the sand. That's where I'd live. If I were a multi-millionaire of course which I'm not! Thank you for your reply! :)
my2cents 