subject: What Causes Natural Disasters? Part Four of Four [print this page] Have you ever experienced the horrifying effects of an earthquake, a volcano, tornadoes, or a hurricane? Depending on where you live, it could be a common thing. You may have suffered the losses of a broken family, a tortured home, and a wiped out population. You may have experienced the heart of a storm, getting hit with flying bar stools, getting swept under water, sitting in basements hoping for the best. This is not fun day off of school, it's a disaster. One way that weather specialists keep track of dangerous natural disasters is by understanding why they form.
Here are some of the main causes of a hurricane and other random facts about this natural disaster. First of all a hurricane is a rotating tropical storm with wings of at least 74 miles per hour They are called hurricanes when they develop over the Atlantic or eastern Pacific Oceans When these storms over the Bay of Bengal and the northern Indian Ocean, they are referred to as cyclones In the western Pacific these dangerous storms are called typhoons Most of the Atlantic Ocean hurricanes are formed around the Cape Verde Islands which is directly off of Africas western coast A tropical storm becomes a hurricane when the wings hit a constant speed of at very least 74 miles per hour The eye is the name of the low-pressure center of the storm. As air sinks into this eye, it clears the skies and forms a relatively calm atmosphere Surrounding the eye is another ring-shaped eye and it carries this storms most violent winds and most intense rains, it is the most dangerous part of the storm The official hurricane season is from June 1st to November 30th in the Atlantic, Caribbean, Gulf of Mexico, and central Pacific, but in the eastern Pacific the season is from May 15th to November 30th Hurricanes are devastating cause they can and often times do cause floods, flash floods, tornadoes, and landslides The most dangerous part of a hurricane is the storm surge, an abnormal rise in sea level. What surges do is cause beach erosion, wash out roads, and decimate houses. To track these very dangerous storms, Forecasters with the U.S. National Hurricane Center located in Florida use satellite imagery, airborn reconnaissance, and computer-model projections.
