Hurricane Irene August 2011

Hurricane Irene

Although I have already covered Hurricanes I thought it was only appropriate to do a quick blog post on the recent Hurricane to hit the shores of the Carribean and the southern states of the USA. Despite it being much less destructive than anticipated, the scale of damage caused by Hurricane Irene was still substantial.

Just a short video footage of the hurricane...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CdW8vdUm70M&feature=related

Characteristics of Irene:

• The first notable Hurricane of the Atlantic season
• Formed on 20^th August and raged across the Caribbean, USA and up through Canada until dissipating on the 29^th August
• Highest winds recorded were 120mph and at its largest had a diameter of over    500  miles!
• At its peak Irene was a Category 3 Hurricane

Below is an image of the path Hurricane Irene took over the 9 days it was present over the Atlantic area. The image also shows when it was at its most dangerous using the Saffir- Simpson scale

3 p’s

Something I still remember from studying weather is the 3 p’s associated with natural disasters. They can vary by definition but im choosing Prediction, Prevention and Preparation. This is something that this article will focus on and will show how implementing the 3 p’s successfully can drastically reduce damage.

Prediction

The majority of this is done by the monitoring of Satellites and local weather conditions to determine the path the Hurricane is likely to take. By predicting this prevention methods can be put in place. Weather stations are constantly monitoring weather conditions so can issue warnings in advance to whether a tropical cyclone is likely to be upgraded to a Hurricane

Prevention

This particular category is hard to apply to Hurricanes as in the simplest of terms they are impossible to prevent. However, prevention can be applied in other ways including prevention of damage to housing, infrastructures and loss of human life. This is where Preparation is key as by putting solid methods in place prior to the Hurricane reaching shore the damage can be drastically reduced.

Preparation

Below are just some of the methods the USA had in place prior to the Hurricane reaching major cities such as New York:

• Severe Weather warnings in place across 8 states
• 2 million people ordered to evacuate including 300,000 people living in low lying areas of New York
• 90 shelters set up in New York for over 70,000 people
• Entire shutdown of New Yorks transit system including the subway, rail travel and bus travel
• 200 trucks of emergency supplies and 100,000 national guards on stand by 

What was the damage from the Hurricane? 

• 55 fatalaties caused by Hurricane Irene
• Total damage caused is approximately $10 Billion
• Extensive flooding across New york and Vermont

Conclusion

Although I haven’t covered any new concepts in this post it is always interesting to see how natural occurring events such as Hurricanes affect humans and how despite our technological advances we can’t overcome human nature. Despite this it is clear to see how our technology has allowed huge advances in predicting paths hurricanes may take and through this enabling preparations to be put in place such as mass evacuations and protections of infrastructure.

Finally, with the Atlantic Hurricane season only just beginning i think we can be fairly certain that more damage from Hurricanes will be felt over the coming months

Have a quick look at the below article which gives an interesting read....

http://news.bbc.co.uk/weather/hi/news/newsid_9504000/9504306.stm