June 26, 2020 By Katie Roundtree

It’s that time of year when our thoughts turn to the tropics and we keep our fingers crossed for a quiet hurricane season.  Below are some interesting facts about these giant storms to kick off the hurricane season on June 1st.

Hurricanes, typhoons and tropical cyclones are all the same phenomenon.  In the Pacific Ocean, hurricanes are generally known as typhoons. In the Indian Ocean they are called tropical cyclones. In the Atlantic Ocean they are called hurricanes.  The word hurricane comes from the Taino Native American word, hurucane, meaning evil spirit of the wind.

The earliest hurricane report comes from Christopher Columbus in 1495, who encountered a tropical storm on one of his voyages to the New World. He later declared that “nothing but the service of God and the extension of the monarchy” would induce him to expose himself to such danger.

The first hurricane to hit the American Colonies happened on August 25, 1635.

The first time anyone flew into a hurricane happened in 1943 in the middle of World War II.

In 1944, the US Navy’s Pacific fleet was crushed by Typhoon Cobra, which sank three destroyers and damaged many ships.

Bangladesh was a country that was created from a hurricane. In 1970, this region of Pakistan was struck by a cyclone and 500,000 people died. The people felt their government did not do enough to help after the disaster so in 1971, they voted to be independent of Pakistan and Bangladesh was born.

In 1971, Hurricane Ginger lasted for over three weeks.

In 1989, Hurricane Hugo completely destroyed several forests in South Carolina.

In 1999, Hurricane Floyd was barely a category 1 hurricane, but it still managed to mow down 19 million trees and caused over a billion dollars in damage.

Only four Category 5 hurricanes (the highest category on the hurricane strength scale) have hit the continental United States since the beginning of the 20th century: the 1935 Florida Keys Labor Day Hurricane, Hurricane Camille in 1969, Hurricane Andrew in 1992, and most recently Hurricane Michael in 2018.

Hurricane Katrina is the costliest hurricane to have ever hit the United States, causing some $125 billion dollars’ worth of damage in New Orleans and across much of the Gulf Coast. It was a Category 5 storm at one point, but a Category 3 when it made landfall along the Louisiana-Mississippi border.

The most intense tropical cyclone ever measured when considering a storm’s central pressure (this pressure drops as cyclones become stronger) was Typhoon Tip, which on Oct. 12, 1979, had a central pressure of 870 millibars.

The most intense tropical cyclone in terms of the highest wind speeds measured was Tropical Cyclone Olivia, which struck Australia in 1996. It had wind speeds of 253 mph (407 kph) the fastest wind ever measured on the Earth’s surface.

Every second, a large hurricane releases the energy of 10 atomic bombs.

Originally, hurricanes were given the names of saints who were honored on the day the storm occurred, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. For example, the hurricane that hit Okeechobee, Florida, in 1928, was alternately called the Okeechobee hurricane and the San Felipe Segundo hurricane because it hit on the feast day of Saint Philip.

The man who first gave names to hurricanes was an Australian weather forecaster named C. Wragge in the early 1900s.

When the National Hurricane Center began giving official name to storms in 1953, they were originally all female.  Hurricanes didn’t start having male names until 1979.

The worst hurricane damage is often caused by a storm surge. A storm surge is like a giant wall of water pushed onshore by hurricane winds.  Most people who die in hurricanes are killed by the towering walls of sea water that comes inland.

The planet Jupiter has a hurricane which has been going on for over 300 years. It can be seen as a red spot on the planet. This hurricane on Jupiter is bigger than the Earth itself.

In the southern hemisphere, hurricanes rotate in a clockwise direction, and in the northern hemisphere they rotate in an anti-clockwise direction. This is due to what’s called the Coriolis Force, produced by the Earth’s rotation.

Hurricane season is from June to November when the seas are at their warmest and most humid, which are ripe conditions for a hurricane to develop.

Sources: http://www.hurricane-facts.com/Interesting-Hurricane-Facts.php; http://www.livescience.com/31751-amazing-hurricane-facts.html; http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/weather/hurricane/sfl-hc-history-1495to1800-htmlstory.html.