For those of us who don’t live in areas vulnerable to hurricanes, their destruction is something we watch on TV or read about in the news. And this always brings questions: Is there anything we can do to prevent the devastation of a hurricane? Why do they seem to be getting more and more frequent? And perhaps most importantly, why the funny names?
Name That Hurricane
Hurricanes are named largely out of convenience. Common names are much easier than latitude and longitude to remember, and because more than one may be happening at the same time, naming makes it easier for researchers, news agencies, and the public to distinguish between them. The particular naming system has evolved somewhat from its beginning.
Originally, hurricanes were named after the saint’s day on which they occurred (e.g., Santa Ana). In the late 1800s, an Australian meteorologist starting giving hurricanes women’s names only; this was adopted in 1953 by the National Weather Service. Now both men and women’s names are used, one name for each letter of the alphabet (except Q, U, and Z), on a six year rotating scale. The names differ between the Pacific and Atlantic; Atlantic hurricane names are French, Spanish, or English (the languages used in that region).
When hurricanes are particularly damaging or costly they’re retired, so we will never experience another “Katrina”—at least in name.
Cyclone or Hurricane?
Geographic differences and speed also dictate how a storm is classified and named. For instance, anything less than thirty-nine miles per hour is a tropical depression; thirty-nine or over is a tropical storm, and once they reach seventy-four miles per hour, they are either called a hurricane, typhoon, severe tropical cyclone, severe cyclonic storm, or tropical cyclone, depending on what part of the world you’re in.
Natural Barriers
While it seems like once a hurricane forms, there’s not much we can do to dissipate it, nature actually has set up protective barriers against it. The only problem is that humans have eradicated many of them.
Barrier islands and wetlands are natural protection against the storm surge, and work to slow it down by helping to absorb the impact. However, when houses are built on barrier islands like Galveston, Texas, they end up doing the absorbing, with devastating results. Furthermore, the destruction of wetlands for construction also increases the storm impact. Wetlands can help to slow a storm, however, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration estimates that the wetlands in the lower forty-eight states are half the area that they were in 1700.
What About the Fish?
Under the sea is where it’s at during a hurricane. Though landfall leads to evacuations and destruction, most ocean life remains unharmed during these violent storms. However, sea birds may be pushed far from their homes by strong winds and animals that habitat on the coast, such as turtles, may have their nests destroyed.
Large, breaking waves can also thrash coral reefs and the organisms that live in and feed off them. Most reefs can recover, however.
Worse or Better?
The effect that global warming—specifically rising ocean temperatures—has on hurricane frequency and strength is not clear. Studies have shown that tropical cyclones have increased in intensity since the 1980s, something that could likely be attributed to rising sea temperatures. However, more recent research indicates that global warming has not caused a surge in frequency, but its affects on the intensity of the storms is unclear.
Whether or not we’ll see an increase in the damage that is incurred by hurricanes has more to do with how many people are continuing to build along hurricane-heavy areas versus those who are able to watch the storm from a safe spot.
Updated August 17, 2009.