Showing posts with label climatic hazards. Show all posts
Showing posts with label climatic hazards. Show all posts

Friday, 9 May 2008

Tornadoes...

Forgot this before, I think!! Sorry!

Selection of links relating to the London tornado of 2006:
• 6 hurt as tornado hits London http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/6217514.stm
• Tornado Families being rehoused http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/6162225.stm
• Battered Homes to be demolished http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/6220000.stm
• After the Dust has settled http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/6161453.stm
• In Pictures: Trail of Destruction http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/in_pictures/6217898.stm
• Claiming for the Tornado Damage http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/6220380.stm
• Animated Guide - Tornadoes http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/5328524.stm
• Tornado Victim’s Future uncertain http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/6220420.stm

(Thanks again to Rob Chambers for these.)

Also check out The Tornado Project Online.

And lots of others... let me know if you spot a particularly good link.

Saturday, 5 April 2008

Climatic Hazards... Part Two

Tropical Revolving Storms... also known as:

- hurricanes in the USA and Caribbean
- cyclones in India, Bangladesh and other parts of southern Asia
- typhoons in Asia Pacific (esp. Japan)
- willy-willies in Australia

...are large storms (300-400 miles across, and 5-6 miles high) rotating round areas of extreme low pressure.

They occur between 5o and 20o N and S of the equator (Coriolis force nearer to the equator is too weak to cause the storm to rotate) where sea surface temperatures are 27oC or greater.

There's a nice summary from the Met Office here, an animated guide from the BBC, and you might like to have a look at Towers in the Tempest which looks at how "hot towers" cause hurricanes to intensify.

Plenty of info also from the National Weather Service and the National Hurricane Center.

As well as understanding how TRSs form, you need to know about the effects they have, and how these are likely to be different in countries/regions at different levels of development.

Hurricane Katrina...


hit the south-eastern USA in August 2005. It is believed to have killed about 1500 people, and with the cost of damage estimated to have been about $300 billion, was the most costly disaster to hit the USA.

The Met Office have put together a very good case study page (click on the satellite image of Katrina above) which looks at the physical impacts, human impacts and responses, and also has a set of activities for you to have a go at.

There are lots and lots of other sources of information available - one of the best is probably the BBC's In Depth Guide and it's well worth spending some time investigating this properly.

This "Storm Viewer" shows the track of Hurricane Katrina, but also shows you how the pressure, wind speeds and precipitation changed with the development of the hurricane. Various similar animations of other hurricanes here.

Cyclone Sidr next...

Climatic Hazards... Part One

Three main climatic hazards that you need to know, the first of which is...

Severe Gales
- associated with mid-latitude depressions where there is a steep pressure gradient
- tend to cause disruption to power supplies and transport

Great Storm of 1987...
Michael Fish's infamous "hurricane" weather report...



Shortly afterwards...



(Remember though, that, although there were hurricane force winds, this wasn't actually a hurricane!)

More on the storm from the Met Office.

More recently...
March this year saw severe storms across much of the UK.

Various news articles from the BBC:

If you follow the links on the right-hand side of the stories, there are several video clips and galleries of photos sent in to the BBC.

There is also an excellent sequence of satellite images which I blogged about at the time... Click on the picture below: