Hurricane Dean and some Hurricane Basics

With Dean getting ready to pummel Jamaica, I thought I'd blog a little about hurricanes, the most awesome and destructive storms on earth. Katrina, Camille, Andrew, Gloria, and Hugo are just a few of the many names of hurricanes that have been retired. (Here's a more complete list.)

This image of Dean is from Sunday morning as it was headed toward Jamaica.

wusa9.com's tropical weather section

With winds up to 150 mph on Saturday and landfalls in Jamaica and the Yucatan expected, Dean will likely make the list of retired names. This whole naming thing started in the 1950s as a way to more easily identify storms. Before 1953, military names like Able, Baker and Charlie were used. The National Hurricane Center's website has a list of all the different names used around the world and a more thorough explanation here.

Classification of names is done in categories from 1 to 5 with the rank being proportional to wind speed and destructive ability. The Saffir-Simpson Scale is where the categories originate from. Hurricane Andrew was a Category 5 storm when it made landfall in 1992 in south Florida while Katrina was actually only a Category 3. It had been a Category 5 storm in the Gulf Of Mexico, but weakened some before landfall. Had the levees not failed, due to improper construction, New Orleans would have been repaired within weeks. We're now going on 2 years and New Orleans will take many more years to recover, and that's assuming that there are no more hurricanes that come close.

When I do talks, I like to remind people that Katrina actually missed New Orleans. The brunt of the storm was in Plaquemines parish and the Mississippi Gulf coast. New Orleans was just brushed by Katrina. Had Katrina hit directly, it would have been an ever greater calamity.

While I am awed by the power and majesty of the strength of large hurricanes, I also feel for the inhabitants of the areas that these storms will strike. Lives will be lost. Property will be destroyed and the survivors will have hardships beyond what most of us can even imagine.

This week, when you see the coverage on television or read about it, please think about making a donation to the Red Cross or Salvation Army or any of your favorite charities that will be helping out after the storm.