Lab #16 – Tracking Hurricanes

Hurricanes are classified according to the Saffir-Simpson Scale, which categorizes the storms from one to five depending on sustained wind speed, height of storm surge, and extent of damage. Some of the specifics for each hurricane category are listed in Table 1. The National Weather Service issues a hurricane watch when there is a threat of hurricane conditions within 24 to 36 hours. They issue a hurricane warning if hurricane conditions are expected within 24 hours.

Table 1

Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Scale
Category	Wind Speed (km/h)	Effects
One	119-153	No real damage
Two	154-177	Some roof and window damage
Three	178-209	Some structural damage to small residences; mobile homes destroyed
Four	210-249	Extensive building failures
Five	greater than 249	Complete roof failure on buildings; some complete building failures

 

Problem

How would a hurricane negatively impact New York City?

 

Hypothesis

 

Materials

Pencil

Atlantic Basin Hurricane Tracking Chart found at http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/AT_Track_chart.pdf

Procedure

Part A—Historical Hurricanes

1. Familiarize yourself with the classifications of hurricanes according to the Saffir-Simpson Scale in Table 1.
2. Read about some major hurricanes of the past, which are described in the Data and Observations section.
3. Use the Saffir-Simpson Scale to classify each of the historical hurricanes described in the Data and Observations section. Write the category number in the space provided next to each description.

Part B—Hurricane Tracking

1. Use the data in Table 2 to plot the course of a hurricane. Start by plotting the storm's location on Day 1 on the Hurricane Tracking Chart in Figure 1.Mark the hurricane's location with a dot, and label it as Day 1.
2. Considering only wind speed, classify the storm as a tropical storm or a hurricane. If the wind speed is less than 119 km/h, consider it a tropical storm. If the wind speed is 119 km/h or more, use the Saffir-Simpson Scale to decide what category describes the hurricane on this day. Write your observations in Table 2.
3. Plot the storm's location at Day 2, label the dot, and connect the two dots with a straight line. Classify the storm as described in step 2.
4. Consider that you are a forecaster with the National Weather Service. You must issue a hurricane warning to any land 24 hours before the center of a hurricane passes over it. Decide if you should issue a warning on Day 2. If yes, what areas would you warn? Write your observations in Table 2.
5. Repeat steps 3 and 4 for the storm's duration.

Analysis

1. Which of the storms described in Part A were category five hurricanes?

2. What information did you use to classify each of the storms?

3. Describe the conditions that led you to issue a hurricane warning.

4. Did the center of the storm pass over the areas to which you decided to issue warnings?

5. When did the hurricane tracked in Part B reach the status of a category three hurricane? (Hint: The data presented in Table 3 shows one measurement for each day of the storm.)

6. Did the hurricane that you tracked in Part B show characteristics of every category described by the Saffir-Simpson scale?

Data and Observations

____ Hurricane Fran moved into North Carolina's southern coast in September 1996. Total damages from the hurricane exceeded $5 billion. Hurricane Fran had sustained winds of approximately 184 km/h and gusts as high as 200 km/h. ____ The Halloween Storm of 1991 has been called the "perfect storm." It packed sustained winds of 120 km/h. ____ Hurricane Bertha pounded the southeast coastline as well as the Bahamas in July 1996. The storm had winds peaking at 184 km/h. ____ When Hurricane Andrew slammed southern Florida in August 1992, it was the most costly natural disaster in United States history, with about $26 billion in damage. The storm killed 26 people and destroyed more than 25,000 homes. Its wind speeds are now thought to have reached up to 265 km/h. ____ Hurricane Celia hit Texas in August 1970, causing $1.6 billion in damage. The storm was characterized by very high winds that damaged an airport and destroyed a nearby mobile home park. Its highest estimated wind speed was around 257 km/h. ____ Hurricane Camille, which hit the Gulf Coast and then swerved east toward the Carolinas in August 1969, was the fifth most costly disaster in United States history with damages of $5.2 billion. Camille caused the death of 250 people. Its sustained wind speeds reached 320 km/h. ____ Hurricane Katrina, which devastated New Orleans in 2005 was the costliest hurricane, as well as one of the five deadliest, in the history of the United States. Among recorded Atlantic hurricanes, it was the sixth strongest overall.  Katrina made landfall Aug. 29 with top sustained wind of about 201 km/h.

 

 

Table 2

Day	Latitude (°N)	Longitude (°W)	Wind speed (km/h)	Type of Storm	Issue warning? Where?
1	15	47	56
2	17	53	80
3	18	57	112
4	21	60	144
5	23	64	160
6	23	69	232
7	25	74	216
8	27	78	216
9	32	79	168
10	41	74	96
11	45	67	72
12	48	56	64

Conclusion

 

  

 

 

A history of hurricanes in New York—including the day in 1893 that Hog Island disappeared for good.

●      By Aaron Naparstek 

●      Published Sep 4, 2005

Last week, as the news from New Orleans kept getting worse, New York found itself in the position of watching another American city’s catastrophe, and giving back some of what was extended to us—in money and worry—four years ago. Despite the horrors we’ve seen, this was not one we could easily imagine.

But our own hurricane history is more tumultuous than many New Yorkers might think. In 1821, when a major hurricane made a direct hit on Manhattan, stunned residents recorded sea levels rising as fast as thirteen feet in a single hour down where there’s now Battery Park City. Everything was flooded south of Canal Street. The storm struck at low tide, though, and, according to Queens College professor Nicholas Coch, a coastal geologist who calls himself a “forensic Hurricanologist,” that’s “the only thing that saved the city.”

Then there’s Hog Island. The pig-shaped mile-long barrier island was off the southern coast of the Rock aways. After the Civil War, developers built saloons and bathhouses on it, and Hog Island became a Gilded Age version of the Hamptons. The city’s political bosses and business elite used the place as a kind of beachy annex of Tammany Hall. That all ended on the night of August 23, 1893, when a terrifying Category 2 hurricane made landfall on the swamp that is now JFK airport.

The hurricane was a major event. All six front-page columns of the August 25, 1893, New York Times were dedicated to the “unexampled fury” of the “West Indian monster.” The storm sunk dozens of boats and killed scores of sailors. In Central Park, hundreds of trees were uprooted, and gangs of Italian immigrant boys “roamed . . . in the early hours of the morning collecting the dead sparrows and plucking them of their feathers.” Apparently looting was not yet in vogue. The brand-new Metropolitan Life building on Madison Avenue was severely damaged. And a 30-foot storm surge swept across southern Brooklyn and Queens, destroying virtually every man-made structure in its path. These days, evacuation plans are in place, officials said last week. But “try to tell someone in Sheepshead Bay that they have to evacuate immediately because within the next 24 hours they’ll have 30 feet of storm surge,” says Mike Lee, director of Watch Command at the New York City Office of Emergency Management. “They’ll laugh at you. I mean, I barely even believe it.”

As for Hog Island, “it largely disappeared that night,” Coch says. “As far as I know, it is the only incidence of the removal of an entire island by a hurricane.”

Statistically, the New York area is hit by one of these monster storms every 75 years or so; “it’s just a matter of time,” says Lee. After Hog Island, the next big one came a little ahead of schedule, the “Long Island Express” of 1938, with 183-mile-per-hour winds. At the time, Long Island wasn’t a densely populated suburban sprawl. The same hurricane today would cause incredible havoc. Hurricane Carol, a Category 3 storm that hit eastern Long Island and came ashore in Connecticut in 1954, mostly missed the city (even as it inundated downtown Providence, Rhode Island, under twelve feet of water).

Were another Long Island Express to barrel in, AIR Worldwide Corporation, an insurance-industry analyst, estimates $11.6 billion in New York losses alone. On AIR’s list of “the top ten worst places for an extreme hurricane to strike,” New York City is No. 2, behind only Miami. New Orleans is ranked fifth.

http://nymag.com/nymetro/news/people/columns/intelligencer/12908/