HURRICANES: A deadly force on Earth.                                              

There are seven atmospheric conditions which, if met together, could cause a hurricane to form. They are; a pre-existing disturbance, warm ocean water, low atmospheric stability, sufficient Coriolis force, (Earth turning) moist mid-atmosphere, and upper atmosphere divergence which are all important factors for a hurricane’s formation.

There are five categories of Hurricanes based upon wind speed. They are;

Tropical Storm:  Winds 39-73 mph

Category 1 Hurricane: Winds 74-95 mph (64-82 kph) No real damage to buildings. Damage to unanchored mobile homes. Some damage to poorly constructed signs. Also, some coastal flooding and minor pier damage. Examples: Irene 1999 and Allison 1995

Category 2 Hurricane: Winds 96-110 mph (83-95 kph)  Some damage to building roofs, doors and windows. Considerable damage to mobile homes. Flooding damages piers and small craft in unprotected moorings may break their moorings. Some trees blown down. Examples: Bonnie 1998, Georges (FL & LA) 1998 and Gloria 1985

Category 3 Hurricane:  Winds 111-130 mph (96-113 kph) Some structural damage to small residences and utility buildings. Large trees blown down. Mobile homes and poorly built signs destroyed. Flooding near the coast destroys smaller structures with larger structures damaged by floating debris. Terrain may be flooded well inland. Examples: Keith 2000, Fran 1996, Opal 1995, Alicia 1983 and Betsy 1965.

Category 4 Hurricane: Winds 131-155 mph (114-135 kph) More extensive curtains wall failures with some complete roof structure, failure on small residences. Major erosion of beach areas. Terrain may be flooded well inland. Examples: Hugo 1989 and Donna 1960.

Category 5 Hurricane: winds 156 mph and up (135+ kph)
Complete roof failure on many residences and industrial buildings. Some complete building failures with small utility buildings blown over or away. Flooding causes major damage to lower floors of all structures near the shoreline. Massive evacuation of residential areas may be required. Examples: Andrew (FL) 1992, Camille 1969 and Labor Day 1935 and Irma 2017.

F0rtunately, we don’t have the hurricanes that are formed on the planet Jupiter. Those winds blow around at 200 miles per hour. (322 kph). Jupiter's Little Red Spot could blow them away with winds moving about at speeds of 384 miles per hour (618 kph). If those winds were on Earth, they would scrape everything off the surface of the land it crossed either by the wind alone or by the storm surge‘s ten-story waves or both. At the speed of the hurricanes at Jupiter’s Little Red Spot, if you were standing on a beach, the small particles of sand would literally tear off your clothes and then skin you alive. Even winds at 156 mph will cause serious injuries to your eyes if you ae facing the wind with your eyes open since any speck of sand hitting your eyeballs at those speeds can do considerable damage to your eyes.

Hurricanes that hit the Caribbean and the eastern and southern part of the United States begin off of the north western part of Africa and subsequently cross the Atlantic heading towards the Caribbean and southern and eastern part of the United States.

It is ironic when you think about it. If Earth was not spinning toward the east and instead was spinning in the opposite direction, the hurricanes would begin in the Caribbean.                

A number of vacationers have in the past, chosen to remain in their hotels during the hurricanes. That can be really stupid.          Not all hotels are that secure against the winds of hurricanes. You certainly don’t want to be in your hotel room when your glass windows are smashed into thousands of small pieces of glass and the shards are coming at you at a speed of a hundred miles an hour. And at night when there is no power, you can bump into objects and even walk into a gash in the outside wall and fall to your death. I have seen pictures of hotels hit by hurricanes were the rooms were literally gutted.                                                           

Being on a street during a hurricane can also be deadly. Debris moving at high speeds can kill you and if you aren’t killed, you can be seriously injured.

What follows next is some of the deadliest hurricanes that hit the United States.                                                               

1. Galveston, Texas Hurricane:  In the year 1900, roughly 8,000 people were killed by this Category 4 hurricane, though some estimates put the death toll as high as 12,000. The south, east and west sides of the city were destroyed as far as  five blocks inland by a storm surge up to 15 feet high. An estimated 3,500 homes and buildings were destroyed.

2. Southeast Florida/Lake Okeechobee Hurricane: In 1928, roughly 2,500 were killed, but it's possible this number is as high as 3,000. The majority of the deaths were from drowning after a storm surge caused Lake Okeechobee to overflow and put the surrounding area under 10 to 15 feet of water.

3. Hurricane Katrina: In 2005, A total of 1,200 direct deaths occurred. Even though Katrina had weakened to a Category 3 before landfall along the northern Gulf Coast, its large size and previous extreme intensity sent a huge storm surge into the Mississippi, southeast Louisiana and Alabama coasts. The surge left behind catastrophic destruction along the coast of Mississippi and stressed the levees protecting New Orleans, causing them to fail. This resulted in an inundation of 80 percent of New Orleans with water depths up to 20 feet.

4. Cheniere Caminanda Hurricane: In 1893, between 1,100 and 1,400 were killed by this Category 4 hurricane. If you include the number of offshore deaths, the total climbs to near 2,000. The greatest devastation was between New Orleans and Port Eads in southeast Louisiana. The storm surge swept many houses away as far east as Mobile, Alabama.

5. Sea Islands Hurricane:  In 1893, there were an estimated 1,000 to 2,000 fatalities. The Category 3 hurricane moved northward near the Georgia coast before making landfall near Savannah. Almost every building on the barrier islands were destroyed by a storm surge of around 16 feet.

6. Hurricane Andrew:  In 1992, this hurricane  was a small hurricane, but it packed extreme winds, estimated to be Category 5 strength at landfall along the southeast Florida coast. The pressure at landfall was 922 millibars. The intense winds caused catastrophic damage in southern Florida, destroying or damaging about 125,000 homes.

7. Indianola, Texas: In 1886, this hurricane took a devastating blow from a Category 3 hurricane in 1875; hundreds died. The town tried to bounce back, only to take an even stronger hit from a Category 4 hurricane on August 20, 1886, the fifth-strongest hurricane to make landfall on the U.S. mainland. Most of the population left town, and the few who remained were scared off by a Category 2 hurricane just five weeks later. The post office closed in 1887 and Indianola ceased to exist as a town.

Hurricanes begin on the west coast of Africa and move across the Atlantic aiming for the southern part of the United States and the  Caribbean Sea.

In September 2017, Hurricane Irma set a record-setting record moving across the Atlantic basin and slammed into eastern Caribbean islands as a massive Category 5 storm. With sustained winds of 185 mph (295 kph), the winds leveled much of the island of Barbuda and then continued on its track toward Puerto Rico and Florida.

In  2018, Hurricane Michael hit the South Eastern  part of the Unite States with a fury. With winds at 155 miles an hour and a surge waive as high as 15 feet, it smashed its way into cities and towns as if they had been hit with tornadoes. It was the worst hurricane as of that year.

Researchers have repeatedly warned that hurricane hazard will obviously increase with global warming, driven by profligate human combustion of fossil fuels that dump greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Hurricanes will hit higher latitudes and deliver more damage within the Gulf of Mexico. But climate change is only part of the answer.

The latest study did not find that storms were intensifying rapidly more often than usual. But the researchers did find that when a storm grew at speeds, it became much more powerful within a 24-hour period than such storms did 30 years ago.  Wind speeds had gained 3.8 knots or seven kilometers (approximately 4.3 miles) an hour for each of the three decades.

And although hurricanes are driven by the warmth of the upper ocean, the researchers decided that rather than overall ocean warming, in this case the biggest factor was a natural cycle called the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation, which in its present phase tends to make ocean waters warmer in the central and eastern Atlantic—the spawning ground for hurricanes.

When Hurricane Harvey hammered the Texas coast in August 2017, the waters of the Gulf of Mexico were warmer than they had ever been. And scientists from the National Center for Atmospheric Research report in the journal Earth's Future that they calculated the rate of evaporation as the hurricane winds raced over the water and compared it with the levels of precipitation over the city of Houston.

To make a hurricane happen at all, ocean temperatures need to reach 26°C (approximately 79°F). When Hurricane Harvey gathered its strength and its moisture, the Gulf waters had tipped up to 30°Celcius.

As climate change continues, we can expect more supercharged storms like Hurricane Michael.

I believe that if the Earth’s atmosphere doesn’t stop increasing in its temperature, the cities on the East Coast and Southern Coast of the United States will eventually be too dangerous to live in as buildings will be blown down to the ground and houses will be swept away as kindling and rubble.

The same kind of forces that occur in the Atlantic also occur in the southern part of the Far East but they are called cyclones. Hundreds of thousands of people have died in those cyclones.